Built With

1. Vercel Functions for cron processes & event subscriptions via webhooks
2. Vercel Cron Jobs for triggering cron processes.
3. Hacker News API for pulling data
4. Slack API for sending and unfurling messages
5. Upstash for key-value storage (Redis).

How It Works

1. Set up a Vercel cron job that pings our

   /api/cron

   endpoint once every 60 seconds.
2. Get the last checked HN post ID (

   lastCheckedId

   ) and the list of

   keywords

   to check against from Upstash.
3. Get the

   latestPostId

   using HN API's

   maxitem

   endpoint. Then, perform checks against each post between

   lastCheckedId

   and

   latestPostId

   to see if they contain any of the delineated

   keywords

   .
4. For each positive post, send its link to Slack using the

   chat.postMessage

   method.
5. Listen to the

   link_shared

   event at our

   /api/event

   endpoint. Once an event occurs, send a POST request to Slack to unfurl the link using the chat.unfurl method.

One-Click Install

Here's a 60s video that walks you through the installation process, step-by-step.

You can click the button below to install the bot directly into your desired Slack workspace:

Once it's installed, create a channel to receive notifications in and start configuring the bot with the

/configure

Deploy Your Own

You can also deploy your own version of this bot using Vercel and Upstash. Note that while this is in early-access, some of these processes might change.

Prefer a video tutorial instead? Watch this video.

Step 1: Create Slack App + Secure Env Vars

1. Navigate to api.slack.com/apps and click on "Create New App".
2. Select "From scratch" and input

   Hacker News Bot

   as the name of your app.
3. Voilà! You've just created your Slack app. Here, you'll receive 3 values that will be used for your Vercel deployment in the next step:
   • Client ID: This is your App's unique public-facing ID that will be the value for the

     NEXT_PUBLIC_SLACK_CLIENT_ID

     env var.
   • Signing Secret: This is the signing secret used to validate that requests are genuinely coming from Slack. It will be the value for the

     SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET

     env var.
   • Verification Token: This is the verification token used to validate that requests are genuinely coming from Slack. It will be the value for the

     SLACK_VERIFICATION_TOKEN

     env var.

Step 2: Create Upstash Account

Go to console.upstash.com and create an account. You'll need it for the next step.

Step 3: Deploy to Vercel

You can deploy your bot to Vercel with one-click:

Be sure to include all 5 of the env vars above in your deployment.

When the project finishes deploying, get your project's domain (e.g.

https://slacker-eight.vercel.app/

Step 4: Configuring Slack app

For your Slack app to be able to send/unfurl messages in your Slack workspace, we will need to configure a few things:

1. From your Slack app home screen, select "OAuth & Permissions" from the sidebar (under "Features").

2. Scroll down to "Scopes", and add the following scopes under "Bot Token Scopes":

   • chat:write

   • chat:write.public

   • links:read

   • links:write

1. Now, select "Event Subscriptions" from the sidebar (under "Features").
2. Toggle "Enable Events" to "ON".
3. For the "Request URL" field, input your Vercel project's domain and append

   /api/event

   to it. The final URL should look something like

   https://slacker-eight.vercel.app/api/event

   .
4. Scroll down to "Subscribe to bot events". Add the

   link_shared

   bot user event.
5. Do the same for `Subscribe to events on behalf of users".
6. Under "App unfurl domains", add

   news.ycombinator.com

   .
7. Click on "Save Changes".

Select "Slash Commands" from the sidebar (under "Features"). Create the following commmand with its respective Request URLs (based on your Vercel project's domain):

• Command:

  /configure

• Request URL:

  https://[YOUR_VERCEL_PROJECT_DOMAIN]/api/cmd/configure

• Short Description: Configure your HN Slack Bot

1. Now, select "Interactivity & Shortcuts" from the sidebar (under "Features").
2. Toggle "Interactivity" to "ON".
3. For the "Request URL" field, input your Vercel project's domain and append

   /api/response

   to it. The final URL should look something like

   https://slacker-eight.vercel.app/api/response

   .
4. Click on "Save Changes".

1. Go to "Basic Information" (under "Settings").
2. Under "Install your app", click on "Install to Workspace".
3. You should receive a notification that your app has been installed in your Slack workspace.
4. Go back to "OAuth & Permissions". Copy the value of "Bot User OAuth Token".
5. Set it as the

   SLACK_OAUTH_TOKEN

   env var in your Vercel project. Here's a guide on how to do that.
6. Redeploy your Vercel project for the changes to take effect.
7. To verify that this worked, go to any channel on your Slack workspace and send a Hacker News link. The link should now unfurl and show a nice preview (like the one above).

Authors

This project was originally created by Steven Tey at Vercel, with contributions/feedback from:

• Guillermo Rauch (@rauchg) – Vercel
• Justin Ridgewell (@jridgewell) – Vercel
• Andrew Healey (@healeycodes) – Vercel
• Drew Bredvick (@dbredvick) – Vercel
• Lee Robinson (@leeerob) – Vercel
• Andreas Thomas (@chronarkdotdev) – Upstash

License

The MIT License.