HN Filter

About

Reclaim Your Hacker News Feed

Hacker News used to mean indie-hacker war stories, systems programming deep dives, compiler internals, startup post-mortems, and first-principles engineering debates. Then the AI wave hit — and now half the front page is ChatGPT wrappers, LLM benchmark comparisons, and prompt-engineering tutorials.

HN Filter is a single-purpose Chrome extension that hides AI-related posts automatically so you can get back to the content you actually care about.

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HOW IT WORKS
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HN Filter runs silently every time you visit news.ycombinator.com. It scans each story title and hides any row that matches a keyword in your list — instantly, client-side, with no network call. A small badge at the top of the page shows you how many posts were filtered ("HN Filter: 14 AI posts hidden") so you always know it's working. The badge disappears on pages with nothing to filter.

Filtering updates in real time: change a keyword and every open HN tab refreshes immediately — no manual reload required.

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FREE PLAN — FULL FEATURES, 50 POSTS/DAY
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Install and you have every feature immediately. The free tier includes:

  · 16 built-in default keywords covering major AI topics, tools, and companies — ready to use out of the box
  · Custom blacklist — add any keyword you want filtered
  · Whitelist — protect topics or terms you never want hidden
  · Real-time sync — keyword changes apply instantly to open tabs

The free plan filters up to 50 AI posts per day. Posts beyond that limit stay visible but appear grayed out with a strikethrough title — so you can still see them, and you know they would have been filtered. The counter resets each day.

Matching uses whole-word, case-insensitive logic, so "mail" won't match "AI" and "magical" won't match "AGI".

No account. No signup. No telemetry. Everything runs locally.

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PRO PLAN — UNLIMITED, FOREVER
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One-time payment of $9. No subscription. Yours forever.

★ Unlimited filtering
   No daily cap. Hide as many posts as HN throws at you, every day, without any counter or degraded display.

★ Everything in the free plan
   All keywords, custom blacklist, whitelist, and real-time sync — no restrictions, no limits.

Activate Pro by pasting your Gumroad license key in the popup. The key is verified once against Gumroad's API and then stored locally. After that, HN Filter never phones home again.

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PRIVACY — EVERYTHING STAYS ON YOUR DEVICE
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· No account required, ever
· No analytics or telemetry
· No browsing history collected or transmitted
· All settings (keywords, license status) stored in chrome.storage.local — never synced to any external server
· The only external network call HN Filter makes is a one-time license key check against Gumroad's API — and only when you click "Activate"

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PERMISSIONS EXPLAINED
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storage
  Saves your keyword lists and license status locally on your device.

host permission: news.ycombinator.com
  The page where filtering happens.

host permission: api.gumroad.com
  Used only for the one-time Pro license verification. Never accessed unless you paste a key and click Activate.

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WHO IT'S FOR
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· Developers who open HN for engineering content, not hype
· Readers who find the volume of AI coverage repetitive and want more variety
· Anyone who wants full control — custom blacklist and whitelist — without paying anything
· Power users who regularly hit the free daily limit and want unrestricted filtering

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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Does it work on /new, /ask, /show, and /jobs pages?
Yes. HN Filter runs on all news.ycombinator.com listing pages, not just the front page.

Does it affect comment threads?
No. HN Filter only hides story rows in listing pages. Comment pages and individual post pages are completely untouched.

Does it block ads or trackers?
No — HN Filter is purpose-built for keyword filtering. Use uBlock Origin for ad and tracker blocking.

Will keywords affect HN search?
No. HN Filter only acts on story listing pages, not search results.

Can I get a refund on Pro?
Yes — if Pro isn't what you expected, email [email protected] within 30 days for a full refund, no questions asked.

Is there a daily limit?
Free users can filter up to 50 posts per day. Posts beyond the limit stay visible but appear grayed out with a strikethrough — the counter resets each day. Pro removes the limit entirely.

Can I use Pro on multiple browsers / machines?
Yes — your license key works wherever you install HN Filter.