# Hacker News Monitor & Who's-Hiring Leads (`hichemdev/hn-monitor`) Actor

Monitor Hacker News for keywords and brand mentions, track Show HN launches, and extract job posts from the monthly 'Ask HN: Who is hiring?' threads. Structured, fast, and reliable - great for brand monitoring, market research, and developer lead generation.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/hichemdev/hn-monitor.md
- **Developed by:** [Hichem Ben Moussa](https://apify.com/hichemdev) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Jobs, Developer tools
- **Features:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 3 total users, 2 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.50 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event and usage. You are charged both the fixed price for specific events and for Apify platform usage.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Hacker News Monitor & Who's-Hiring Leads 🟠

**Search and monitor Hacker News** for keywords, brand mentions, and Show HN launches — and extract structured **job posts** from the monthly *"Ask HN: Who is hiring?"* threads. Built on the free Algolia HN API, so it's fast and reliable.

### 🔎 Modes

- **`search`** — find stories and comments by keyword, filter by type (`story`, `comment`, `ask_hn`, `show_hn`, `front_page`), sort by popularity or date, and restrict to a recent window. Great for **brand monitoring**, **market research**, and **lead/pain-point mining**.
- **`whoishiring`** — automatically finds the latest *"Ask HN: Who is hiring?"* thread and returns every job post as a structured row. Optional keyword filter (e.g. `remote`, `python`).
- **`user`** — pull a specific user's recent stories and comments.

### 🎯 Use cases

- **Founders & marketers** — get alerted when your product, company, or competitors are mentioned on HN.
- **Recruiters & developers** — turn "Who is hiring?" threads into a clean, filterable job/lead list.
- **Market & trend research** — track how often a topic or technology is discussed over time.
- **Sales / lead gen** — mine comments for companies and pain points to reach out to.
- **Content teams** — find the highest-signal stories in your niche.

### 📥 Input

- `mode` — `search`, `whoishiring`, or `user`.
- `query` — keyword(s).
- `tags` — item-type filter for `search`.
- `sortBy` — `popularity` or `date`.
- `sinceDays` — only items newer than N days (0 = no limit).
- `author` — for `user` mode.
- `maxItems` — result cap.

### 📤 Output (search example)

```json
{
  "objectID": "40123456",
  "type": "story",
  "title": "Show HN: I built a web scraping tool",
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "author": "pg",
  "points": 342,
  "numComments": 128,
  "createdAt": "2026-07-10T14:22:00.000Z",
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40123456"
}
```

### 🔌 Integrations & scheduling

- **Schedule** it daily to monitor mentions and get a fresh feed of matches.
- Export to **CSV, Excel, JSON, or Google Sheets**, or pull via the Apify API.
- Pipe matches to **Slack/Zapier/Make** for instant brand-mention alerts.

### ❓ FAQ

**Where does the data come from?** The free, public Algolia Hacker News Search API — fast and generous.

**Can it find every job in "Who is hiring?"** It pulls the top-level comments (job posts) from the latest thread, and you can filter by keyword like `remote` or `react`.

**How is it priced?** Pay per result — per story, comment, or job post returned. No subscription.

### 🗺️ Roadmap

- Scheduled monitoring with new-match alerts (webhook/Slack)
- Sentiment tagging of mentions
- Email/contact extraction from Who's-Hiring posts

# Actor input Schema

## `mode` (type: `string`):

"search" finds stories/comments by keyword. "whoishiring" extracts job posts from the latest 'Ask HN: Who is hiring?' thread. "user" pulls a user's recent activity.

## `query` (type: `string`):

Search keyword(s) for 'search' mode. Optional keyword filter for 'whoishiring' (e.g. 'remote', 'python').

## `tags` (type: `array`):

Filter by HN item type: story, comment, ask_hn, show_hn, front_page. Empty = stories + comments.

## `sortBy` (type: `string`):

Order search results by popularity or by newest first.

## `sinceDays` (type: `integer`):

Restrict to items created within this many days. 0 = no limit.

## `author` (type: `string`):

Hacker News username to pull activity for (user mode).

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of items to return.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "mode": "search",
  "query": "web scraping",
  "tags": [
    "story"
  ],
  "sortBy": "popularity",
  "sinceDays": 0,
  "maxItems": 100
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "query": "web scraping",
    "tags": [
        "story"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("hichemdev/hn-monitor").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "query": "web scraping",
    "tags": ["story"],
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("hichemdev/hn-monitor").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "query": "web scraping",
  "tags": [
    "story"
  ]
}' |
apify call hichemdev/hn-monitor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,hichemdev/hn-monitor"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/nBN7GcGmIdPdpdrN0/builds/3OcsGUE27f1vvB7lg/openapi.json