Hello everyone!

I’m excited to introduce Hacker News WatchDog Bot, a Telegram bot that helps you keep track of discussions on Hacker News. If you often follow threads and hate missing out on new comments, this bot has you covered.

Features

    - Watch Threads or Comments: Add any HN thread or comment to your watch list. We support both full links and IDs.
    - Scheduled Notifications: The bot checks for updates at regular intervals and notifies you of new comments or activity. Currently, changes are detected based on the score and descendants of the thread or comment.
    - Easy Commands:
        -  /watch - Start watching a specific thread or comment for new replies.
        -  /unwatch - Stop watching a thread or comment.
        -  /list - Show the list of threads or comments you're currently watching.
        -  /update - Get updates on all threads or comments if there have been any changes.

Why I Built It

I plan to introduce an open-source Message Broker based on PostgreSQL, and I think Hacker News is a great place to share my work. To monitor my thread in the future, I needed a tool, so over the weekend, I decided to build a simple, tiny, and easy-to-use bot to satisfy my needs.

Try It Out

    - I built a web app that serves as an entry point to connect to my bot at https://hacker-news-watchdog.web.app. It also shows simple statistics about the bot
    - You can also ping the bot on Telegram at https://t.me/hacker_news_watchdog_bot
    - The source code is available at https://github.com/kanthorlabs/hackernewswatchdog

What’s Next?

I will add instructions later on how to deploy the bot so everyone can set it up in their own environment and use it privately.