Open-source · local-first · MV3 browser extension

A calmer Hacker News,
right on the real site.

Pretty Hacker News re-skins news.ycombinator.com in place — same page, same links, your existing login. Dense Classic look by default, themes one toggle away, and plain HN one toggle back.

Try the reader → Source on GitHub How to install

The demo is a no-install taste of the reader. Voting, commenting, and AI need the installed extension.

Pretty Hacker News feed view with the dense Classic theme Pretty Hacker News story page with threaded comments

What it does

Renders in place

Takes over HN's feed and item pages with a clean reader; other pages stay native.

Themes

A faithful, dense Classic by default — plus calmer and playful themes (yes, a Bloomberg terminal one).

Your real account

Upvote, comment, and reply via the HN session already in your browser. No passwords stored.

Keyboard + collapse

j/k to move, o/Enter to open, u to upvote; collapse threads, read/seen dimming, save for later.

Inline previews

Read a linked article's clean text inline, without leaving HN. Optional, off by default.

Optional AI brief

Bring your own key. Summarizes the linked article and the comment thread, and points you to comments worth reading. Reading only — never posts.

Built to be trusted

  • No backend, no analytics. Everything runs locally; your settings live in your browser.
  • Scoped permissions. Access is limited to news.ycombinator.com (plus optional, on-demand access only if you turn on article previews).
  • AI is opt-in. With no key, Pretty Hacker News makes zero AI calls. When enabled, requests go straight from your browser to the provider you chose, with your key — through no server of ours.
  • AI is for reading, never for speaking. It summarizes and matches; it will never write comments or vote for you. That's a covenant in the LICENSE.
  • Verifiable. The guarantees are enforced by tests that run in CI, and every network call is listed in the privacy policy.

Install

A Chrome Web Store listing is in review. Until then, load it unpacked:

  1. Clone the repo and run bun install then bun run plasmo:build.
  2. Open chrome://extensions and turn on Developer mode.
  3. Load unpacked → select build/chrome-mv3-prod.
  4. Open news.ycombinator.com.

Full instructions are in the README.