Find reply-worthy Hacker News and Stack Overflow threads with GPT and Discord
Ready for 3.0Ready for 3.0. This template uses no nodes that n8n 3.0 removes. No removed nodes, versions or helpers found. Static check, last run 2026-10-19.
Nodes used (12)
- Schedule Trigger
n8n-nodes-base.scheduleTrigger - Manual Trigger
n8n-nodes-base.manualTrigger - Edit Fields (Set)
n8n-nodes-base.set - Code
n8n-nodes-base.code - HTTP Request
n8n-nodes-base.httpRequest - Merge
n8n-nodes-base.merge - Data table
n8n-nodes-base.dataTable - If
n8n-nodes-base.if - Basic LLM Chain
@n8n/n8n-nodes-langchain.chainLlm - OpenAI Chat Model
@n8n/n8n-nodes-langchain.lmChatOpenAi - Discord
n8n-nodes-base.discord - No Operation, do nothing
n8n-nodes-base.noOp
What it does
Quick overview Searches Hacker News and Stack Overflow for recent threads matching your keywords, then asks a model twice: whether a reply would genuinely help, and what to write. Drafts land in Discord for you to read. Nothing is ever posted. How it works 1. Runs every morning on a schedule or starts manually. 2. Builds per-keyword searches and queries the Hacker News Algolia API and the Stack Exchange Advanced Search API for threads created within the configured time window. 3. Normalizes results from both sources and filters out duplicates, old items, low-engagement items, downvoted posts, and any Stack Overflow questions that are closed or already answered. 4. Checks an n8n Data Table to remove threads that have already been evaluated in previous runs. 5. Sends the remaining candidates to an OpenAI-compatible chat model to decide which threads are genuinely a fit for a helpful product-aware reply. 6. For the threads deemed a fit, asks the model to draft a non-marketing reply (or refuse with NOTWORTHPOSTING) and formats a character-limited digest. 7. Sends the digest to Discord via a webhook and upserts one row per judged thread into the Data Table so it is not reprocessed. Setup 1. Add an OpenAI-compatible API credential for the chat model used to judge fit and draft replies. 2. Create an n8n Data Table named communitythreads with columns threadkey, source, title, url, verdict, and seenon. 3. Create a Discord incoming webhook for your target channel and add it as a Discord webhook credential. 4. Update the Settings values (keywords, product name, what it does, max age, engagement threshold, thread caps, and Stack Exchange site such as stackoverflow) to match your use case. Requirements - A Discord webhook URL and any OpenAI-compatible key. Hacker News and Stack Exchange are both searched without a key. Customization - whatitdoes in Settings is the sentence fit is judged against, so write it the way a stranger would describe the problem. maxkeywords caps how much of the 300-a-day Stack Exchange quota one run spends.