Posting a Show HN: What Hacker News Says Actually Qualifies

A submission whose title starts with Show HN is Hacker News's format for sharing work you made yourself, and it is the one submission type on the site with its own dedicated rules page. That page is short, it is the authority, and most of the advice written about launching on HN either paraphrases it badly or contradicts it.

This is what it says, quoted rather than summarised, plus the parts of the general guidelines and FAQ that apply to it.

What is a Show HN?

Hacker News defines it in a single sentence at the top of its Show HN Guidelines: "Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with." The next sentence explains why that phrasing was chosen: "HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread."

Everything downstream follows from playability. The format exists so that the thread is a conversation between the person who built the thing and people who have just used it. A submission that cannot produce that conversation does not belong in the format, however interesting it is.

What qualifies as a Show HN?

The guidelines draw the boundary with two short lists.

On topic, in HN's words: "things people can run on their computers or hold in their hands. For hardware, you can post a video or detailed article. For books, a sample chapter is ok."

Off topic, again verbatim: "blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material. Those can't be tried out, so can't be Show HNs. Make a regular submission instead."

Note what that last clause does. It is not a ban. A blog post is a perfectly good HN submission, it is just not a Show HN, and the guidelines tell you where to put it instead.

Four further conditions appear in the same page:

• It must be yours. "The project must be something you've worked on personally and which you're around to discuss."
• It must be non-trivial. "Don't post quickly-generated one-offs; anybody can do that now. Share something that is deeply personal and interesting to you. Explain how and why."
• It must be ready. "If your work isn't ready for users to try out, please don't do a Show HN. Once it's ready, come back and do it then. Don't post landing pages or fundraisers."
• It must be easy to try. "Please make it easy for users to try your thing out, ideally without barriers such as signups or emails. You'll get more feedback that way."

There is an explicit exemption from polish, which surprises people: "A Show HN needn't be complicated or look slick. The community is comfortable with work that's at an early stage." Rough is fine. Unfinished is not.

Version bumps are ruled out separately: "New features and upgrades ('Foo 1.3.1 is out') generally aren't substantive enough to be Show HNs. A major overhaul is probably ok."

The path to a Show HN

Made by you

Non-trivial

Ready to try

Easy to try

Show HN

What is the Show HN title format?

One rule, stated once: "To post, submit a story whose title begins with 'Show HN'."

That is the entire formatting specification. The prefix is a literal string at the start of the title, and everything after it is governed by the ordinary HN submission guidelines, which are stricter than most launch checklists assume:

Rule from the HN guidelines	What it means for a Show HN title
"Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is"	No ALL CAPS, no exclamation marks, no "amazing"
"If the title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link"	Drop your own domain from the title
"If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it"	"10 Ways To Do X" becomes "How To Do X"
"If you submit a video or pdf, please warn us by appending [video] or [pdf] to the title"	The tag goes at the end

So a well-formed title looks like Show HN: A terminal client for reading RSS offline and not Show HN: MyApp.io: The AMAZING New Way To Read RSS!.

Show HN vs Ask HN vs a plain submission

The FAQ separates the three in a single line: "Ask HN lists questions and other text submissions. Show HN is for sharing your personal work and has special rules."

	Show HN	Ask HN	Plain submission
Title prefix	Begins with Show HN	Begins with Ask HN	None
URL field	A link to the thing	Left blank	Required
Own rules page	Yes	No	No
Must be your own work	Yes	Not applicable	No
Holding page	shownew	asknew	newest

Two mechanical details come from the FAQ. To post an Ask HN you "use the submit link in the top bar, and leave the url field blank," and text submissions cannot contain links at all: "You can't. This is to prevent people from submitting a link with their comments in a privileged position at the top of the page."

The plain submission is the default and carries no requirement that you made the thing. A write-up about how you built something, rather than the something itself, is a plain submission.

Why has my Show HN not appeared?

Because it is probably on the holding page. The guidelines say "Every Show HN appears on shownew. Once it clears a small points threshold, it will appear on the show page in the top bar," and the FAQ repeats the same rule for both formats: "All Ask HNs appear on newest and asknew, and all Show HNs on newest and shownew, but there is a small points threshold before a post makes it to ask or show."

HN does not publish the number. It also does not publish the ranking formula in full, describing it only as an algorithm that "divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted," with "user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action" as other inputs. Our breakdown of the Hacker News ranking algorithm covers what can be reconstructed from the published parts.

The rule that gets launches penalised

Vote solicitation, and it is stated twice. The Show HN page ends with "Please don't ask friends to upvote or comment. That's not ok on HN." The general guidelines say "Don't solicit upvotes, comments, or submissions." The FAQ is the most specific about consequences: "We penalize or ban submissions, accounts, and sites that break this rule, so please don't."

It also warns that asking for comments backfires socially: "HN readers are sensitive to this and will detect it, flag it, and use unkind words like 'spam'."

A related line applies to anyone launching repeatedly: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." That is a sharper regime than the one governing a Product Hunt launch.

How the thread is supposed to go

The Show HN page carries its own comment rules, separate from the sitewide ones, and they are gentler:

• "Be respectful. Anyone sharing work is making a contribution, however modest."
• "Ask questions out of curiosity. Don't cross-examine."
• "Instead of 'you're doing it wrong', suggest alternatives. When someone is learning, help them learn more."
• "When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is, but don't be gratuitously negative."

This is the practical reason the format is worth the constraints. HN has written down that the bar for a Show HN thread is kindness toward someone who built something, which is not true of a general submission thread.

One timing constraint: the FAQ states that "threads are closed to new comments after two weeks, or if the submission has been killed by software, moderators, or user flags."

Watching Show HN as a channel

Show HN is a steady stream of people describing a problem they cared about enough to build for, in public, under their own name. That makes shownew a high-signal feed for competitive and customer research, and it is machine-readable through the official API, which our guide to the Hacker News API walks through. Volume context sits in our Hacker News statistics roundup.

RedReplier runs Hacker News monitoring on every Show HN, Ask HN and front-page story in real time, then ranks each keyword match by buyer intent so only the threads worth a reply reach you. Details are on the Hacker News monitoring page. As everywhere else in the product, it drafts and you post.

Frequently asked questions

Can I post a Show HN for a paid product?

Yes, provided people can actually try it. The guidelines never mention price. They do ask you to "make it easy for users to try your thing out, ideally without barriers such as signups or emails," so a hard paywall at the front door works against the format even though nothing forbids it.

Can I do a Show HN for a project I did not build?

No. The rule is explicit: "The project must be something you've worked on personally and which you're around to discuss."

Is a landing page a Show HN?

No. "Don't post landing pages or fundraisers" appears in the guidelines, and sign-up pages are named in the off-topic list because they "can't be tried out."

Can I repost a Show HN that got no traction?

The FAQ allows limited reposts: "If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates." It also says not to delete and repost, since "deletion is for things that shouldn't have been submitted in the first place."

Does a Show HN need a [video] tag?

Only if the link itself is a video. The guidelines ask submitters to append [video] or [pdf] to the title in those cases. Hardware projects are explicitly allowed to link a video or a detailed article in place of something runnable.

What happens if my Show HN breaks the rules?

It gets treated like any other off-format submission. HN uses [flagged] when "users flagged the post as breaking the guidelines or otherwise not belonging on HN" and [dead] when "the post was killed by software, user flags, or moderators." Dead posts are hidden unless a reader turns on showdead in their profile.

How long does a Show HN thread stay open for comments?

Hacker News closes Show HN threads to new comments after two weeks. A thread also closes early if it gets killed by software, moderators, or user flags before the two weeks are up.

Does a Show HN need to look polished before I post it?

The Show HN page states directly that a submission needn't be complicated or look slick, since the community is comfortable with early-stage work. What matters is that people can try it, not how it looks.

Can I post a Show HN for a new version of a product I already showed?

The guidelines treat version bumps like "Foo 1.3.1 is out" as not substantive enough for a new Show HN. A major overhaul is a different case, and the guidelines call that probably ok.

What is the difference between shownew and the show page?

Every Show HN lands on shownew first, the holding page for the format. It only reaches the show page in the top bar once it clears what the guidelines call a small points threshold, a number HN does not publish.