Hacker News is one of the few places where a new technical product can get thoughtful feedback from thousands of engineers and founders in a day. It's also one of the easiest places to get it wrong. Show HN has its own rules, the community dislikes marketing language, and the moderators enforce the rules against vote solicitation. This guide summarizes the official Show HN guidelines, the site guidelines and FAQ, and the moderators' published tips, all checked on 30 October 2026, and turns them into a launch plan.
Disclosure: Pulltip publishes this guide and is a launch platform itself. See our sponsored content policy.
What Show HN is (and isn't)
In the words of the guidelines: "Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with." HN users can try it out, give feedback and ask questions in the thread.
| Qualifies | Doesn't qualify |
|---|---|
| Software or tools people can run or use | Blog posts and other reading material |
| Hardware, shown with a video or detailed article | Sign-up pages and landing pages |
| A book, with a sample chapter | Newsletters and lists |
| Early-stage work that people can try | Fundraisers |
| A major overhaul of an existing project | Minor version announcements ("Foo 1.3.1 is out") |
The guidelines add three conditions worth reading twice:
- It must be your own work, something you've worked on personally and are around to discuss.
- It should be non-trivial. The guidelines say not to post "quickly-generated one-offs".
- It must be ready to try. "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."
If what you have is an article about your product, submit it as a regular story instead.
Before you post: make it easy to try
The single most practical rule: the guidelines ask you to make it easy to try your thing, "ideally without barriers such as signups or emails". The moderators' tips say the same and add that HN users get irritated by hoops.
- Offer a no-signup path: a live demo, a sandbox, a sample project, a downloadable binary or a public repository.
- If signup is unavoidable, say why in your text and keep the form minimal.