How to monitor Hacker News for leads
You can absolutely monitor Hacker News yourself: hn.algolia.com is free, RSS tools work, and generic keyword-alert services cover HN. The DIY stack breaks down at triage — someone has to read every mention and decide if it's a lead. That triage is the product here: AI reads every match, scores it 0-100 for buying intent, and explains why.
| Feature | Idea Sensai | DIY (HN search + keyword alerts) |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free tier; Pro $19/mo | Free (your time is the cost) |
| Coverage | Every HN story and comment, polled every 5 minutes | Whatever you remember to check |
| Triage | AI separates askers from answerers, intent from chatter | You, reading everything |
| Explainability | Every score shows its reasons | N/A |
| Alerting | Daily digest + instant email for hot leads | Manual checks or raw RSS pings |
| Competitor intel | Switching signals and sentiment, tagged automatically | Manual note-taking |
| Control | Managed pipeline (editable keywords) | Total — it's your stack |
When DIY is the better choice
- • You check HN recreationally anyway and your keywords are rare enough to eyeball.
- • You want full control of the pipeline and enjoy building this kind of tooling.
- • Zero budget, unlimited time.
If you'd rather spend those hours replying to the three people who are actually buying this week, Idea Sensai finds them minutes after they post — see today's live examples on our public feed.