HackerNews Daily Digest

A minimal news-aggregation project that fetches HackerNews top stories once a day, filters them by score and (optional) topic keywords, and keeps a rolling markdown log + a live Scarf dashboard.

Requires Scarf 2.3+ — uses the Configuration form during install and on-demand re-edit.

What you get

Configurable score threshold — only stories at or above this score show up. HN front page averages ~150; lower it to widen the net, raise it to focus on the truly viral.
Configurable item cap — keeps each digest from sprawling. Default 15.
Optional topic keywords — a list of keywords (case-insensitive substring match against titles). Items that match a keyword get a [topic] tag in the digest and "ok" status in the dashboard list. Empty list = include every story above threshold, no highlighting.
No API keys — HackerNews' Firebase API is fully public. Nothing in this project's .scarf/config.json is secret; no Keychain entries are created.
digest.md — agent's append-only log. New runs prepend at the top. Created automatically on first run.
.scarf/dashboard.json — live dashboard with stat widgets (top score, items tracked, last run) and a Top Stories list.
Cron job Daily HN digest — registered (paused) by the installer; tag [tmpl:awizemann/hackernews-digest]. Runs daily at 8:00 AM when enabled.

First steps

During install, fill in the Configuration form — set min_score, max_items, and any topic keywords you care about. (All have sensible defaults if you just want to skip it.) Hit Continue, then Install.
After install, open the Cron sidebar and enable the [tmpl:awizemann/hackernews-digest] Daily HN digest job. It's paused on install so nothing runs without your explicit say-so.
From the project's dashboard, ask your agent to run the job now: "Run the HN digest and update the dashboard."
Future runs happen automatically at 8 AM daily.

Changing filters later

Click the Configuration button (slider icon, dashboard toolbar) to re-open the form pre-filled with your current values. Adjust score, max items, or topics. Save. The next cron run picks up the changes.

Customizing

Change the schedule. Edit the cron job in the Cron sidebar — accepts 30m, every 2h, or standard cron expressions like 0 8 * * *.
Switch sources. This template is HN-only by design. To pull from Lobsters, Reddit, or RSS, fork it (export from a Scarf project, edit cron/jobs.json's prompt, re-import) — most of the agent contract is generic.
Add alerting. Set a deliver target on the cron job (Discord, Slack, Telegram) — the agent will post the run summary there instead of just writing to digest.md.

Recommended model

claude-haiku-4 works well — this is a simple HTTP-fetch + filter + markdown task. Haiku keeps costs low when the cron runs daily. The recommendation appears in the Configuration form; Scarf doesn't auto-switch your active model, so adjust via Settings if you'd like.

Uninstalling

Right-click the project in the sidebar → Uninstall Template… (or click the shippingbox icon on the dashboard header). Scarf walks you through exactly what's about to be removed: template-installed files in the project dir, the [tmpl:…] cron job, and the configuration values you entered (config.json; this template stores no secrets so there's nothing in Keychain to clean up). User-created files (like digest.md) are preserved.

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