The Show HN launch checklist

Show HN is the part of Hacker News where people share things they have built. It has its own rules, a community that has little patience for marketing, and moderators who enforce both. This checklist takes you from “is my project eligible?” to the week after, with every rule linked to its source on Hacker News.

What Show HN is, and what it is not

The official Show HN guidelines are short, so read them in full before you post. In summary:

• It is for something you made that people can play with. Readers try it, give feedback and ask questions in the thread.
• On topic: things people can run on their computers or hold in their hands. For hardware, a video or a detailed write-up is fine. For a book, a sample chapter.
• Off topic: blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists and other reading material, plus landing pages and fundraisers. If people can't try it yet, come back when they can.
• It has to be your own work, and you have to be around to discuss it.
• It should be non-trivial. The guidelines say not to post quickly generated one-offs, because anybody can make those now. Share something personal and interesting to you, and explain how and why you built it.
• It doesn't need to look slick. The community is comfortable with early-stage work.
• Upgrades usually don't count. “Foo 1.3.1 is out” generally isn't substantive enough. A major overhaul probably is.
• Don't ask friends to upvote or comment. More on this below, because breaking it gets posts penalised.

If you built your app with Cursor, Lovable, Bolt or v0, the “non-trivial” line is the one to think hardest about. If the honest story is “I prompted this in an afternoon”, it is probably not ready for Show HN. If you spent real time on a real problem and AI tools helped, say what the problem was and what you learned building it.

Before you post

• Try it as a stranger. Open it in a private window, on a phone and on a laptop. Fix anything that blocks someone in the first minute.
• Remove the sign-up wall for the first try. See make it easy to try below.
• Check it can take a spike. Rate limits, database connection limits, paid API quotas and free-tier hosts that sleep are the usual failure points.
• Turn on error tracking and analytics, so you can see what breaks while the thread is live.
• Check your link preview. Hacker News shows a plain text link, but readers paste good finds into Slack, X and group chats. Test the card with the free OG image preview.
• Add an email address to your HN profile. The Show HN tips ask for this so moderators can contact you, and sometimes send repost invites.
• Post as a person, not a brand. The same tips advise against a username that is your company or project name, because it feels like promotion. You can email hn@ycombinator.com to change it.

Write the title

The rule is simple: submit a story whose title begins with “Show HN”. After that, the general HN guidelines apply: no uppercase or exclamation marks to make it stand out, no saying how great it is, and nothing misleading or linkbait.

A format that works is Show HN: [Name], [what it does in plain words], or just Show HN: [what it does] if the name adds nothing. Some made-up examples:

• Weak: “Show HN: GRIDCAST, the future of dashboards!” Stronger: “Show HN: Gridcast, turn a CSV into a dashboard you can share by link”
• Weak: “Show HN: The AI-powered productivity platform for modern teams” Stronger: “Show HN: A habit tracker that syncs through your own WebDAV server”
• Weak: “Show HN: My new app (please check it out)” Stronger: “Show HN: I turned my bank's CSV export into a budgeting app”

Concrete details such as “open source”, “self-hosted”, “runs in the browser” or the language it is written in tell readers what they are clicking on. Adjectives don't.

Write the maker's first comment

When you submit, you can add text. According to the Show HN tips from HN moderator dang, linked from the guidelines, it should show at the top of the submission. If it doesn't, post it as the first comment; either is fine. Those tips ask for:

• A clear statement of what the project is or does. Without one, the thread fills up with “I can't tell what this is”.
• The backstory: how you came to work on it.
• What is different about it compared with what already exists.
• Personal stories and technical details. How it works, what it is built with, the trade-offs you made.
• Links to earlier HN threads that are relevant. Readers like those.
• No marketing or sales language. The tips call it an instant turnoff on HN. Use factual, direct language.

An outline you can write from (an outline, not text to copy):

1. One sentence on what it is and who it is for.
2. Why you built it: the problem you kept running into.
3. How it works: the stack, the one interesting technical decision, the current limits.
4. How it differs from the alternatives you tried.
5. What is free, what is paid, and how to try it without signing up.
6. The specific feedback you want.

Write it by hand. In 2026 the tips gained a new first item: don't use an LLM to generate any of your text, not even to edit or polish it. The HN guidelines also ask people not to post generated or AI-edited text, and that covers your replies in the thread too. LaunchLoop drafts Product Hunt, X and LinkedIn copy; it doesn't write Show HN posts, and neither should any other AI tool.

Make it easy to try

The guidelines ask you to make your project easy to try, ideally without barriers such as sign-ups or emails, because you will get more feedback that way. The tips add that HN users get ornery if you make them jump through hoops. Ways to do it:

• A demo mode or sample data that loads without an account.
• A guest session that only asks for an email when someone wants to save their work.
• For CLIs and libraries: a one-line install and a copy-paste example at the top of the README.
• For things that can't run in a browser: a short video or a detailed write-up with photos, which the guidelines accept for hardware.
• Visible pricing. If there is a paid plan, show the price without making people sign up to find it.
• If you really need accounts, say so in your text and explain why.

Pick a time

Hacker News doesn't publish a best time to post. What the HN FAQ does explain is ranking: points divided by a power of the time since submission, plus other factors such as user flags, anti-abuse software and moderator action. Every Show HN appears on /shownew, and moves to the Show page once it clears a small points threshold.

• Post when you can stay for several hours. The guidelines require you to be around to discuss it, and early questions deserve quick answers.
• Avoid days you are travelling, shipping something else or stuck in meetings.
• Don't delete and repost if it starts slowly. The guidelines ask you not to, and there are better options (see after the launch).

Reply to comments

The comments are the point of a Show HN. The guidelines ask commenters to be respectful and curious and to suggest alternatives rather than say “you're doing it wrong”. Hold yourself to the same standard:

• Answer questions specifically. Give the real detail. If you don't know, say so.
• Thank people for criticism, even blunt criticism, and say what you will do about it. Don't argue or get defensive.
• Read comments generously. The HN guidelines ask everyone to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says.
• Fix bugs live. When someone reports one, fix it and reply in the thread when the fix is out.
• Be upfront about limits and trade-offs. It is more convincing than any claim.
• Don't comment on the voting on comments or hint that critics are astroturfing. Both are against the guidelines.

Never ask for upvotes or comments

The Show HN guidelines say not to ask friends to upvote or comment. The HN guidelines say not to solicit upvotes, comments or submissions. The FAQ says HN penalises or bans submissions, accounts and sites that break this rule, and that readers will detect requested comments, flag them and call them spam.

Enforcement is largely automatic. HN runs a voting ring detector, and dang has said they don't publish how it works, because it would quickly stop working, and that the penalty it applies is a software penalty that has nothing to do with the content of the story. The FAQ also notes that some votes are dropped by anti-abuse software. In practice:

• Don't drop the HN link into Slack, Discord, WhatsApp groups or your newsletter asking people to upvote, comment or “show some love”.
• Don't ask teammates, friends or users for booster comments. The tips say HN users are adept at spotting them, consider them spam and will flame you for it.
• Don't buy votes or join vote-swap groups.
• Do keep sharing your product itself (your site, not the HN thread) wherever you normally would.

After the launch

• Keep answering. The FAQ says threads close to new comments after two weeks, so late questions can still get a reply.
• Ship fixes from the feedback and reply in the thread when they are live.
• If it didn't get attention: the FAQ allows a small number of reposts if a story hasn't had significant attention in the last year or so. Moderators also run a second-chance pool that puts overlooked submissions back on the front page, and sometimes invite submitters to repost. That is why the email address in your profile matters.
• Your next Show HN: only for a new version that is significantly different. The tips suggest once or twice a year at most, with a comment linking the previous Show HN and explaining what changed.
• Turn the best questions into FAQ entries and landing page copy. The questions people asked are the objections your landing page needs to answer.

Launching on Product Hunt as well?

Hacker News and Product Hunt reward different things. Product Hunt wants a polished listing with a 60-character tagline and gallery images: follow the Product Hunt launch checklist and read how to write a Product Hunt tagline. Both sites ban asking for upvotes. If you built with an AI builder, how to launch a vibe-coded app covers the pre-launch fixes those tools tend to skip.

LaunchLoop drafts your landing copy, Product Hunt post, X thread, LinkedIn post and launch images from your repo, so you can spend launch day in the HN thread. Your Show HN text should still come from you. Start with a free preview or see pricing.

Sources

• Show HN guidelines, Hacker News
• Hacker News guidelines
• Hacker News FAQ
• Tips for presenting a Show HN, by HN moderator dang, linked from the Show HN guidelines
• dang on HN's voting ring detector (March 2026)
• dang on HN's second-chance pool