Hacker News Read-Later Exporter

WHAT IT DOES

Hacker News Read-Later Exporter scans the current Hacker News page for article links (front page, new, ask, show, etc.), extracting story titles, URLs, points, comment counts, authors, and timestamps. The floating panel displays selectable checkboxes for each story, allowing batch selection of articles for export to read-later services (Instapaper, Pocket, Pinboard, etc.) or as plain text/bookmarks. "Select all" and "select visible" controls make bulk selection easy, and selections are remembered across page navigation. Export selected links as CSV, JSON, Markdown, or plain text, with a "save to clipboard" function and a reading list generator for Markdown-formatted output.

WHERE IT RUNS

Works exclusively on Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) pages, including the front page, new, ask, show, and job listings. The script detects story items using HN-specific selectors and extracts metadata from the page structure. It works best on HN discussion pages and can also detect stories on related HN domains.

HOW TO USE

The panel appears on any Hacker News page with a list of stories. Each story is displayed with a checkbox, title, domain, points, comments, and author. Use the checkboxes to select stories you want to save for later. Click "Scan Page" to detect all stories on the current page. Use "All" to select every story, "None" to clear all selections, or "Visible" to select only the first 30 stories. Choose the export format (Markdown, CSV, JSON, or plain text) and click "Export Selected" to copy the list to your clipboard. The "Markdown List" button provides a quick way to generate a reading list in Markdown format with clickable links.

MECHANISM — STORY EXTRACTION WITH SELECTION PERSISTENCE

The script detects Hacker News stories by finding .athing or .hnitem elements and extracting the story title from the titleline or storylink element. The URL is extracted from the link's href attribute, and the domain is parsed from the URL. Points, comment count, and author are extracted from the subtext element immediately following the story element. Each story is assigned a unique ID based on its position and title. Selections are stored in GM_setValue using a key-value store where the story ID maps to a boolean value. This allows selections to persist across page navigation. The export function formats selected stories according to the chosen format: Markdown lists, CSV rows, JSON objects, or plain text lines.

THE PANEL

The floating panel is fully draggable and remembers its position per domain. Click the minimize button to collapse it to a small bubble, or press Escape to hide it. The panel automatically adjusts to different screen sizes and can be resized to show more content. All settings, including default export format and selection history, are saved per domain. The panel integrates smoothly with any page layout using the BGPanel framework, maintaining clean separation from page content.

PLEASE NOTE

This script requires the free BotGentz extension to run. It does not send any data to external servers; all selections and settings remain entirely local to your browser using GM_setValue. The script never reads password fields, hidden inputs, or file inputs. It stores only story titles, URLs, and selection status from publicly visible Hacker News content. The script works exclusively on Hacker News and detects pages by hostname. Story extraction depends on HN's HTML structure; if the layout changes, the script may need updating. Data persists across browser sessions and is isolated per browser profile.