Introduction

DeepSeek Harness (DSH) supports extending its capabilities through plugins. When an agent needs to access real-time Hacker News data—such as top stories, user information, or comments—parsing the HN JSON APIs directly in code is usually not flexible enough. xby-hnews, as a plugin, provides encapsulated data service interfaces that can be called directly in the DSH environment to retrieve the required information.

What It Is

This is a plugin maintained by xby-skill and belongs to the online/web tools category. It is a toolkit that provides functionality for fetching stories, comments, user information, and searching stories from Hacker News.

Core Features

The plugin mainly provides the following interfaces:

  • set_xby_apikey: Set the API key in chat. The key is automatically persisted and remains valid after DSH is restarted.
  • get_stories: Retrieve Hacker News stories. It supports four types: top, new, ask_hn, and show_hn. It does not include comments; to retrieve comments, use get_story_info.
  • get_user_info: Retrieve user information, including stories submitted by the user.
  • search_stories: Search stories on Hacker News. It is recommended to use simple queries to obtain broader results (fewer than 5 words).
  • get_story_info: Retrieve detailed story information, including comments.

Installation and Activation

Run the following command in the DSH terminal to install the plugin. Before installation, review the source code and license.

dsh plugin --profile web add github:xby_skill/xby-hnews

Typical Usage

After installation, you can call the above interfaces in DSH conversations or scripts. Here are some common usage patterns:

  • Get the list of top stories: get_stories('top')
  • Get a specific user’s profile: get_user_info
  • Search related stories: search_stories('AI')
  • Get story details and comments: get_story_info

Use Cases and Notes

  • Use Cases: Developers who need to integrate real-time Hacker News content into an agent, analyze a specific user’s activity, or perform tech news search.
  • Notes: Before use, obtain an API key from the Xiaoben Yang official website. When searching stories, overly complex queries may not return results; it is recommended to use simple keywords only.

Conclusion

xby-hnews provides Hacker News data access capabilities for the DSH ecosystem. You can get more information through the following links: Plugin Directory | GitHub Repository.