What we check, and where each rule comes from
Every check is tagged. HN rule checks come from Hacker News’s own pages: the Show HN guidelines, the general site guidelines and the submit form’s 80-character limit. Style checks are our clarity advice; reasonable people could write a good title that fails them, so they count for less in the checklist score.
- The prefix. HN lists a post as Show HN when its title begins with “Show HN”. We suggest the standard “Show HN: ” form. “Launch HN” is a different format HN arranges for Y Combinator startups.
- Length. 80 characters including the prefix.
- No hype. The guidelines ask people not to make titles stand out with uppercase or exclamation points, or by saying how great something is. Words like “revolutionary” and “the ultimate” break that rule. Marketing words that are also normal speech (“powerful”, “seamless”, “blazing fast”) get a style note instead, and words that are part of a name (“Magic Wormhole”) or a technical phrase (“magic links”) aren’t flagged.
- Gratuitous numbers. HN crops “10 Ways To Do X” to “How To Do X” unless the number means something.
- Emoji and URLs. HN filters most emoji out of titles, and it prints the link’s domain next to the title, so neither belongs in it.
- Clarity (style). Can a stranger tell what it is? The common pattern is “Show HN: Name – what it does”, sometimes with who it’s for. Words that fit any product (“everything”, “for everyone”, “solution”) get a warning. A word pattern can only go so far, which is why the AI assessment also scores clarity.
The AI assessment
Pattern checks catch the written rules, but they can’t tell whether “Write in the browser” means anything to a stranger. So when you pause typing, we ask Jev 1.13, TypeSafe’s decision model, to score the title on HN guideline fit, clarity, specificity and hype. Each bar shows the most likely label and how likely it is, and the headline number is their weighted average. A title that promises to change everything loses points for claims that likely can’t be true. The checklist stays underneath, and its score takes over if the AI isn’t available.
Writing the title
HN readers click on things they can try and understand. Say what it is in the words a developer would use: “a Postgres extension for full-text search in 40 languages” beats “search, reimagined”. Put the specific, unusual part in the title (local-first, open source, runs in the browser, written in Rust), because that’s what makes someone curious. Avoid marketing verbs.
Want rewrites? The headline analyzer with the Show HN type scores your title the same way and suggests five alternatives, each scored, that only use what you’ve told it.
The title is half the post. The other half is the text and your first comment: what you built, why, how it works, what’s rough, and what feedback you want. Our Show HN post template walks through that structure, and the launch post generator can draft a first version for you to rewrite. Planning several launches in one week? Use the launch checklist to keep track.