HN Watercooler – listen to HN threads as an audio conversation
Hi HN, here's something fun to play with. It takes any HN thread and turns it into an audio conversation so you can listen to the thread while doing other things. I've seen many previous attempts to turn HN threads into podcasts, but they all shared a common issue IMO: trying to reduce the very rich back-and-forth into a single-thread single-reader boring podcast. Instead, I wanted to hear the actual debate from the actual thread! So I asked Claude 3.7 to build this for me as a browser-only app. It just needs a thread URL and an Elevenlabs API key (this all remains in your browser, you can…
In plain words
HN Watercooler converts Hacker News threads into audio conversations by assigning different voices to commenters and preserving the back-and-forth debate structure. Users provide a thread URL and an Elevenlabs API key to generate a listenable version of discussions, useful for consuming HN content while multitasking. The browser-based tool keeps all processing local with no server storage, and recurring commenters maintain consistent voices throughout the conversation.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hi HN, here's something fun to play with. It takes any HN thread and turns it into an audio conversation so you can listen to the thread while doing other things. I've seen many previous attempts to turn HN threads into podcasts, but they all shared a common issue IMO: trying to reduce the very rich back-and-forth into a single-thread single-reader boring podcast. Instead, I wanted to hear the actual debate from the actual thread! So I asked Claude 3.7 to build this for me as a browser-only app. It just needs a thread URL and an Elevenlabs API key (this all remains in your browser, you can check the source code, it's only 3 files, there is no server storage of anything). To make the resulting audio experience as natural as possible, each commenter has a different voice. Commenters who appear multiple times in the thread have the same voice, and introduce themselves. A bit of context is also introduced when coming back "up" from deeply nested comments. You can play the resulting audio or download it for later listening. I'm planning to later add the ability to load multiple threads so I can have a playlist generated for listening in the gym! Any comments or improvement suggestions are appreciated!
Does a similar job
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- IBI built an interactive HN SimulatorNov 2025 · news.ysimulator.run · ▲538
Hey HN! Just for fun, I built an interactive Hacker News Simulator. You can submit text posts and links, just like the real HN. But on HN Simulator, all of the comments are generated by LLMs + generate instantly. The best way to use it (IMHO) is to submit a text post or a curl-able URL here: https://news.ysimulator.run/submit. You don't need an account to post. When you do that, various prompts will be built from a library of commenter archetypes, moods, and shapes. The AI commenters will actually respond to your text post and/or submitted link. I really wanted it to feel…
- THThe HN Recap – AI generated daily HN podcast2023 · hackernewsrecap.buzzsprout.com · ▲177
We've been running The HN Recap for a month to make it easier to consume Hacker News. While this was a PoC in understanding adoption for AI-generated podcasts, we now plan to keep this going, since lots of people are now listening to this daily. Let us know what other content channels you'd like to receive as Podcasts and we'll get on it. Read more about our learnings here → https://wondercraft.ai/blog/learnings-from-1-month-of-ai-pod...
- HUHN Update – Hourly news broadcast of top HN stories2024 · hnup.date · ▲644
I feel like it was inevitable, with the recent buzz around NotebookLM. I'm just surprised that it hasn't been done yet.
I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscriptJul 2026 · github.com · ▲433HN is great for the links people share, but a big part of the value I get comes from reading the discussion around them. I realized I was always opening the article in one tab and the comments in another, constantly switching back and forth. I figured there was probably a simpler way, so I threw together this userscript to merge the two. 1. Clicking a link from Hacker News opens the article with a side panel containing the discussion. It doesn't require your credentials, is resizable, and is easy to tweak if you want to customize it. 2. If you land on an article that has previously been…
- HNHacker News Discourse turns HN stories into Clubhouse-style audio rooms2021 · ▲36
I'm Seth, creator of discourse.fm, a browser-based tool/platform to create live audio chat rooms. I just launched an extension of the site - https://hackernews.discourse.fm/ - which pulls stories in real-time from the HN site using the public API, and enables anyone to join a live audio discussion about the story (think Clubhouse rooms autogenerated for HN stories). Once you enter a room, you can grab the link generated for a room and paste it back to the comments on the HN story to invite more participants. hackernews.discourse.fm is both a full-fledged product and a…
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