HN Comments Reader
A Chrome extension that makes reading Hacker News threads easier.
Features
- Drill-down view — A thread opens showing top-level comments only, each with a
badge of how many replies are buried beneath it (
▸ 112 replies). Click a comment to reveal its direct children one level at a time; click again to collapse the subtree. Deep nesting is capped so descended levels stay on screen. - Markdown rendering — Comment bodies render the markdown HN leaves as raw text
(
**bold**,`code`, fenced code,[text](url),-/1.lists,>quotes,#headings,~~strike~~, tables). Built on vendored marked + DOMPurify. - Tucked-away compose box — HN's large always-open comment box is hidden; a top-right Add comment button reveals it. The real form is preserved, so posting still works.
Everything is toggleable from the toolbar popup.
Install
Add to Chrome from the Chrome Web Store →
Or load it unpacked for development:
- Open
chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode. - Load unpacked → select this folder.
- Open any thread, e.g.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48573332.
How it works
HN renders comments as a flat list of <tr class="athing comtr"> rows in depth-first
order, with depth in <td class="ind" indent="N">. The extension reconstructs the tree
from row order + indent and drives the UI purely by showing/hiding HN's own rows, so
voting, reply links, usernames and timestamps keep working untouched.