Around a little more than a year ago, thanks to the advancements in agentic coding, I created my personal ideal HN reading app. There are oh so many of those, but this one is mine. I couldn’t write syntax in any programming language if my life depended on it, so I was glad to have different models help me in that regard. I’m transparent about it, because a lot of HN users might view this negatively and I don’t want to mislead anyone.

The updated feature set includes:

* Updated UI for everything, including the story view with a favicon and simplified actions. * Dark mode switching based on device settings as a default, but optional setting * Responsive design for hopefully easier reading on mobile * On Desktop split view: the comment section opening up with the story list as a sidebar for easier story switching. * Updated thread design * Added Save functionality

As I’m only an avid reader, not really contributor, I don’t really care about any account management or reply features. Nothing in here requires an account. Saving a story is simply locally done.

I know there are some controversial things in this app, like the use of a JS framework for something as simple as this, or the color of the main nav (which doesn’t pass AA). I tried to appeal to some of the audiences whims, like making the general comment UI relatively dense (I feel this crowd appreciates it!), but I want to make one thing very clear: I built this for me and not necessarily anyone else. I didn’t really anticipate to share this, I just wanted to make something nice and proper for myself. I’d love some feedback, but I guess I can make my life easy and just say: “I like it this way”.

If you find this useful, great - let me know in a comment. If you find this dreadful, feel free to tell me why.

PS: as for the name, I misremembered the movie “Hackers” to be called “Hackerz” for whatever reason and based it off this.

I’m going to go to sleep now - bye!