Do I need to invite a bot to my server?

No. A Discord channel webhook is enough: Server Settings → Integrations → Create Webhook, then paste the URL into FishOut. It needs the Manage Webhooks permission and nothing else.

The Postman recipe only checks top stories. Does this?

No. FishOut searches new Hacker News posts and comments for your keywords, whether or not they reach the front page. Most of the useful ones never do.

Can alerts go into a forum channel?

Discord requires a thread for webhooks posting into a forum channel. Point the FishOut channel at a text channel, or at a thread you create for alerts.

Discord alerts are on every FishOut plan, Free included, with ten keywords checked hourly on Hacker News, Reddit, Bluesky, GitHub and Google News.

Integrations DiscordHacker News

Hacker News alerts in Discord

Developer-tool companies often run their community on Discord, and want to know the moment their project comes up on Hacker News. The recipes for it poll HN and post to a Discord webhook; FishOut does the same through the same kind of webhook, but reads every post first, so the channel carries the threads worth joining rather than every string match.

Start free The Discord guide

Checked hourly; every 15 minutes for Fast keywords on paid plans. Discord alerts are on every plan.

[01] WHAT ARRIVES/ DISCORD MESSAGE

A Hacker News post, in Discord

A Show HN in your category. Reply, carefully: lead with help, because the author is launching, not shopping.

#signal · Engineering

FishOutAPPnow

Reply, carefully: a relevant post on Hacker News

Show HN: I replaced our helpdesk with a shared inbox and three rules

Relevance 81 · Topic · Positive · by tamsin_k

Hint: Lead with help, don't pitch

Labels: Discussion, Announcement

Open in FishOutView on Hacker News

[02] WHAT GETS FILTERED/ NOISE

What never reaches Discord

2 Hacker News matches that go to Filtered instead, each with its reason.

Filtered · Hacker News

Comment · item 41883511Hacker News

Flagged: AcmeMail referral link, 20% off

Filtered · Spam

Referral and affiliate drops match your name and are worth nothing.

Story · item 41883720Hacker News

Notchmail-style notches on the new phone

Filtered · Different meaning

Hardware threads borrow product-sounding words every week.

[03] KEYWORDS THAT WORK HERE/ HACKER NEWS

For Hacker News, into Discord

More keyword shapes are on monitoring Hacker News.

The repository name as well as the product name

Engineers on HN refer to an open-source project by its repo. A community channel cares about both.

A competitor plus “self-host”

Self-hosting threads are where a Discord community’s members tend to answer before you do.

A floor of 70

A community channel is read by people who are not paid to read it. 70 keeps the embeds to threads members would actually want to join.

Settings · Notifications

Discord

Hacker News → a channel

Healthy

Relevance floor70

Eventsmention.scored

Batch bursts5 min

[04] SET IT UP/ 4 STEPS

Four steps, about five minutes

Hacker News into Discord, start to finish.

1
Create a webhook in your server
Walkthrough on the Discord guide.
2
Paste it under Settings → Notifications → Discord
Then send a test.
3
Add Hacker News keywords under Keywords
Start with: The repository name as well as the product name.
4
Floor 70, mention.scored
Batching stays on.

Nobody gets pinged by a title

HN titles sometimes contain “@everyone” as a joke. FishOut escapes Discord Markdown and sends allowed_mentions empty, so a title can neither ping the server nor fake a link.

[05] A BUSY DAY/ DIGEST

When Hacker News gets loud

When your own Show HN is on the front page, a Discord channel that posts every comment becomes unreadable for the community you built it for. The digest sends the first, then one embed listing the five most relevant for each window, led by the spike line so everyone knows why it is busy.

#signal · Engineering · 5-min digest

FishOutAPP+5m

3 new mentions for AcmeMail

Show HN: A Discord bot that triages support email · Hacker News · 88
Open-source shared inboxes worth self-hosting in 2026 · Hacker News · 81
Ask HN: How do you route community questions to support? · Hacker News · 75

Open these in FishOut

[06] THE RECIPE YOU WOULD OTHERWISE BUILD/ DIY

Val Town “hnValTown”

A cron script searches HN for a query hard-coded in its code and posts matches to a Discord webhook kept in an environment variable.

Deduplication and the schedule, neither of which is described
Filtering beyond the query
Hosting and editing the script

Val Town “hnValTown” compared with FishOut
	The recipe	F5Bot Gold	FishOut
What reaches Discord	Every match	Keyword matches	Posts read at 70 or above
A busy hour	A message per match	Instant or scheduled	One now, one digest
Discord delivery	See its source	$49.99/mo, Gold	$0 on Free