# Native Hacker News TUI client with AI comments summary written in Golang

> Source: <https://code.intellios.ai/cwnews/>
> Published: 2026-06-27 16:04:40+00:00

# cwnews

A fast terminal Hacker News reader with threaded comment folding, score-coloured story lists, three themes, and AI-powered thread summarization via DeepSeek V4 Flash.

Built in Go on Bubbletea v2. Left panel browses stories across all six HN feeds (Top / New / Best / Ask / Show / Jobs) with pagination. Right panel renders nested comments with collapsible threads, coloured depth indent, and summary panel streaming live from DeepSeek.

Ask · Show · Jobs

Zinc cyan

streaming thread summary

## What it is

cwnews is a full-screen Bubbletea TUI for reading Hacker News on the terminal. It fetches stories and comments from the official HN Firebase API, caches everything in SQLite for instant re-opening, and provides real-time AI summaries of comment threads with word-by-word streaming.

The left panel is a dense story browser: six feed tabs, pagination with
`n`

/`p`

, and score- and comment-count coloured
metadata. Titles truncate cleanly to fit. The right panel shows a
threaded comment view with collapsible nesting, coloured depth bars,
and a cursor that highlights the active comment in accent orange.

Press `s`

on any thread and DeepSeek V4 Flash streams a
detailed summary — sentiment, key points, standout quotes, consensus
& debate — formatted with markdown headings, bullet points, and
italicized blockquotes. Summaries are cached in SQLite, so switching
back to a thread is instant. Language is configurable (Chinese or
English).

The three themes cycle with `t`

: a dark HN-inspired palette
with orange accents, a classic cream-background HN look matching the
real website, and a cyan-accented zinc theme from cwmail's design
system.

## Why it’s different

`Enter`

or `←`

to collapse
any thread, `→`

to expand, `[`

/`]`

to fold by depth level, `n`

/`N`

to jump
between top-level comments. Vim-style `j`

/`k`

navigation moves a highlighted cursor through the visible list.
`s`

and the right panel switches to an AI summary
view. DeepSeek V4 Flash streams text word-by-word with a braille
spinner in the status bar. Summaries cover overall sentiment, key
points, standout comment quotes, consensus & debate breakdowns,
and meta-observations. All cached in SQLite — reopen any thread
and the summary appears instantly without another API call.
`h`

/`l`

or direct
`1`

-`6`

keys. Each feed loads 50 stories per
page from the 500-item HN ID pool. `n`

/`p`

paginates; the page indicator shows `1/17`

in the tab
bar. Switching feeds resets to page one.
`'`

, `<p>`

).
cwnews decodes all HTML entities and strips tags before rendering,
so you never see `'`

or raw `<p>`

markers in comment text.
`~/.local/share/cwnews/cwnews.db`

.
Re-opening a previously viewed thread shows comments immediately
while a background refresh fetches any new replies. Cached summaries
mean the AI panel is instant on the second press of `s`

.
## What it looks like

## Install

Download a pre-built binary from the
[Google Drive release folder](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10u8t-tPC0cPRsGpCwaCniqqbzMxLDcb2?usp=sharing)
(current build: v0.1; macOS arm64 / amd64 and Windows amd64). Drop it
somewhere on your `PATH`

and make it executable:

```
# macOS
curl -L <download-url> -o ~/.local/bin/cwnews
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/cwnews

# Windows (PowerShell)
Invoke-WebRequest <download-url> -OutFile cwnews.exe
```

Create a config file at `./config.json`

or
`~/.config/cwnews/config.json`

:

```
{
  "theme": "hn",
  "ai": {
    "api_key": "sk-...",
    "model": "deepseek-v4-flash",
    "summary_language": "zh"
  },
  "ui": {
    "sidebar_width_ratio": 0.40
  },
  "cache_ttl_minutes": 5
}
```

Set `"summary_language"`

to `"en"`

for
English summaries or `"zh"`

for Chinese. The AI API key
is the same DeepSeek key used by cwcode and cwmail.

Run it.

```
cwnews
```

## FAQ

`s`

for a summary.`t`

to cycle through three themes:
**hn**(dark, orange accents),

**hn-classic**(cream background, matches real HN), and

**zinc**(cyan-accented dark). The active theme shows in the footer.

`j`

/`k`

to
navigate, `g`

/`G`

for top/bottom,
`d`

/`u`

for half-page scroll,
`h`

/`l`

to switch feeds,
`Enter`

to open a story and focus comments,
`Tab`

to switch between panels, `q`

to quit.
The footer bar in each view shows the context-relevant keys.[Google Drive](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10u8t-tPC0cPRsGpCwaCniqqbzMxLDcb2?usp=sharing). Source currently private. Reach out at

[haojng@gmail.com](mailto:haojng@gmail.com)for access.