Listening

A watch finds the threads worth answering on open sources, ranks them, and says why each one ranks where it does.

Sources

• Hacker News, through its public search: stories and comments, with points, author and time.
• RSS and Atom feeds: blogs, newsletters, podcasts and release feeds. Podcast transcripts linked from a feed are matched too.
• Bluesky search, and Mastodon hashtags on the instances you choose.

Reddit feeds are not a source. Feeds, transcripts and instances are read from public web addresses only.

A watch

A watch holds its terms (all of, any of, none of, and exact phrases), its sources and its products. A new match arrives once as a finding, linked to where it was found. Posts by your own team never become findings, and you keep a list of blocked authors.

All of and any of terms match whole words as written, whatever their capitals: "rota" matches "Rota" and "rota", never "rotation". A term with spaces is an exact phrase. A one-word never include term also keeps out the word's other forms, since it names a topic to leave out: "hiring" keeps out "hire", "hires", "hired" and "hirer" too, so it keeps out an "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired?" thread.

When a source fails, the watch shows the error and its time, and keeps what it found before.

A product named with an everyday word

A watch matches its terms wherever they appear, so a bare everyday word finds every thread that uses it. Watching for "rota" when your product is Rota finds the clinic asking how to schedule shifts, and also a comment about a hospital rota under a story about Fortran, and someone's work history in a hiring thread. To keep a watch on what you do:

• Use phrases for what your product is for ("shift scheduling", "staff rota", "nurse scheduling") rather than its bare name, or require a second word with Must include all of ("rota" and "clinic").
• Leave the bare name out of the watch's terms. The watch's products still count: a finding that names your product ranks higher and says so ("names Rota").
• In Settings › Brand, tick Count Rota only when written Rota on the product, so "a month rota" never counts as naming it, in findings or in drafts.
• Add the topics you never want as Never include terms ("hiring", "fortran").

A term found only deep in a thread about something else, such as one comment under an unrelated story, is a passing mention: it ranks low, says so in its reasons, and never shows on Today as worth answering.

Ranking with reasons

Findings rank by fit to your products, each with its reasons: the terms it matched, freshness, and whether the thread asks a question you can answer. A term in a thread's title (or in the post itself, for Bluesky and Mastodon) counts in full; a term found only deep in a long thread about something else counts little, and so does a question asked there. Each thread is listed once, at its best finding's rank, with how many more findings it holds ("2 more in this thread"). Each finding shows the terms it matched ("matches invoicing"), with "+1 more reason" when it has more, and, when you open it, every reason and what it says where it matched: a short passage around each term in its text, or its opening lines when only the title matched, so you can judge it before opening the thread. A finding's own text never changes its rank.

Check now, in the watch's menu, reads its sources at once and says what it found. When nothing is new it says why: a source that failed or asked to wait, matches already listed, or no thread matching the terms at all. Each phrase is matched as written, so when a check finds nothing, fewer or shorter terms find more.

Answering

Stump has no feature that comments on or votes on Hacker News, so a Hacker News finding goes to a hand-off with a brief and facts, and the named person answers in their own words. A hand-off goes to a member of a venue: record the site (for example news.ycombinator.com) as a venue with its members, and its findings offer Hand off; until then a finding offers to add the venue. People who engaged with your accounts first are answered from the inbox.