I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript
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HN is great for the links people share, but a big part of the value I get comes from reading the discussion around them. I realized I was always opening the article in one tab and the comments in another, constantly switching back and forth.I figured there was probably a simpler way, so I threw together this userscript to merge the two.1. Clicking a link from Hacker News opens the article with a side panel containing the discussion. It doesn't require your credentials, is resizable, and is easy to tweak if you want to customize it.2. If you land on an article that has previously been shared on HN, the script finds the existing discussion and adds a button in the top-right to open the panel.Feedback welcome.
HN · launched Jul 28, 2026 · 433 upvotes (top 1%) · 0 views
Niche: browser productivity extensions · 205 launches, 15 in the last 7 days ▼ -6% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Workflow automation
- Prosumer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 205 launches in browser productivity extensions →
Could you build this?
Yes A userscript that intercepts Hacker News clicks or creates split-pane/iframe views is standard DOM manipulation achievable in a single prompt.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Reddit as a discussion source, Chrome extensions, Tampermonkey scripts, Firefox extensions (historical), GSuite/Google Docs comments
Concerns raised: Filter could enable tracking/privacy issues through adversarial collision scenarios, Over-biasing universal annotation schema risks blocking legitimate use cases, Non-static pages cause strange behavior, Auto-update requires @updateURL/@downloadURL specification
Feature requests: Dedicated HN browser (Chromium-based) with built-in commenting/submission, Mark all read functionality with session memory, Dupe detection or unsubmitted link detection, Split view/tile tabs for reading article and comments simultaneously
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 152 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #6 of 153 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 268 days after the earliest competitor.
- I put HN discussions next to the article where it belongs · hn · 2026-03-04 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.63
- Hacker News but for comments posted on HN · hn · 2026-11-02 · 19 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Hacker Backlinks · hn · 2026-02-06 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Better HN · hn · 2026-03-13 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- HN Companion · hn · 2026-02-10 · 31 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- Hacker Atlas · hn · 2026-09-25 · 86 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- Wikihack · hn · 2026-11-02 · 339 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Turning 100-plus comments HN threads into readable discussions · hn · 2026-01-02 · 20 upvotes · similarity 0.47
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.