Hacker News Mention Monitor with OpenClaw
OpenClaw is straightforward to point at a defined task, and this one is defined twice over: the terms you watch and the policy that decides what interrupts you. Both are plain text written in Setup, so the agent has very little to invent. NoClick keeps it sweeping hourly without anyone hosting anything.
Watch it work before it's live
Run a staged conversation — no account needed. The agent handles it for real while a simulated world answers its tool calls; nothing touches real accounts, and nothing is actually sent.
Hourly sweep, Tuesday 14:00
The 14:00 tick fires. A Show HN posted 40 minutes ago is at 168 points and 74 comments, sitting fourth on the front page. The top comment, from user tkachenko, asks how self hosting compares with the incumbent, two people report that the docs link returns a 404, and a competitor's founder has replied twice in the thread.
Set up in minutes
Using this template drops you into a guided setup. It asks exactly this, nothing else:
Connect Hacker News
One sign-in. The agent acts through your account, scoped to what this template uses.
Connect Slack
One sign-in. The agent acts through your account, scoped to what this template uses.
Watch terms
Every term worth watching, in your own words: your product and company names, your domain, your founders' Hacker News handles, and the competitors you want to hear about. The agent searches exactly these, so include the spellings and misspellings people actually type.
Ping policy
What earns an immediate Slack ping versus a line in tomorrow's roundup, for example a front page story or a complaint thread pings while a passing mention waits, plus the channel and the hours you are happy to be interrupted in.
Runs on OpenClaw
Preselected for this page — connect your OpenClaw account during setup, or switch to NoClick's built-in models with one click.
Watch it handle a test run
A staged conversation against a simulated world — then it’s live.
Why OpenClaw for this agent
Two variables do the work
Watch terms and ping policy carry the intelligence of this agent. The harness mainly has to follow them faithfully.
Hourly without a machine
A monitor is only useful if it never misses an hour, which rules out anything depending on a laptop being open.
Before you fork
Can it ever post on Hacker News by accident?
No, because no write operation exists in the template. It searches, fetches items and reads comments, and the only thing it can write anywhere is the Slack message. Whether you reply to a thread stays a decision a person makes with their own account.
Run it with a different agent
Put Hacker News Mention Monitor to work on OpenClaw
Free to start. Guided setup, a test run against staged conversations, and it's live.