How to launch on Show HN: the rules and a post that gets read
Show HN takes things people can try now, never landing pages or signup walls. The rules, the title format, why posts get flagged, and the post itself.
LLaunchScaler·Published ·11 min read
Show HN is Hacker News's slot for something you made that other people can try right now, posted with a title that starts with "Show HN" by someone who stays to discuss it. Blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, landing pages and fundraisers break the rules, and so does asking friends to upvote or comment.
Everything below comes from the Show HN guidelines, the Hacker News guidelines and FAQ, and the posting tips the moderators link from the guidelines, all read in September 2026. The second half covers the part most launches get wrong: making the product easy to try before the post goes up.
What are the Show HN rules?
The Show HN guidelines open with one sentence: "Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with." It has to be your own work, it has to exist, people have to be able to try it, and you have to be there to answer. The rest of the rules follow from that.
Here are the rules in the order the guidelines give them, with the wording that matters:
It must be tryable. On topic means "things people can run on their computers or hold in their hands." For hardware, a video or detailed article is fine, and for books, a sample chapter.
Reading material is off topic: "blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material." Those can go in as regular submissions.
It should be non-trivial. The guidelines now add: "Don't post quickly-generated one-offs; anybody can do that now."
It must be work you did personally "and which you're around to discuss."
It needn't look slick. "The community is comfortable with work that's at an early stage."
Make it easy to try, "ideally without barriers such as signups or emails."
If it isn't ready for people to try, wait. "Don't post landing pages or fundraisers."
The title begins with "Show HN".
Point releases ("Foo 1.3.1 is out") generally don't qualify. "A major overhaul is probably ok."
"Please don't ask friends to upvote or comment. That's not ok on HN."
The general Hacker News guidelines apply on top: don't use HN primarily for promotion, don't solicit upvotes, comments or submissions, and don't delete and repost.
What counts as on topic for a Show HN?
Questions, answered
What people ask about this
01
What are the rules for Show HN?
Show HN is for something you made that other people can try, and you must be around to discuss it. Blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, landing pages and fundraisers are off topic, and you may not ask friends to upvote or comment.
A Show HN is on topic when a reader can use the thing within a minute of clicking. Software they can run, a web app they can open, a library they can install, a game they can play and hardware they can see working all qualify. Anything that only describes a product, or collects an email so you can tell people about it later, does not.
You want to post
Show HN?
What the rules say to do instead
A web app anyone can open and use
Yes
Post it, ideally usable without a signup
An open-source library or CLI
Yes
Link the repository or install page
A game playable in the browser
Yes
Post it
Hardware
Yes, with a video or detailed article
Show it working
A book
Yes, with a sample chapter
Link the chapter
A waitlist or "coming soon" page
No
Come back when it's ready to try
A blog post about what you built
No
Submit it as a regular story
A newsletter or a curated list
No
Submit it as a regular story
A fundraiser
No
Not allowed as a Show HN
A minor version bump
Usually no
Only a major overhaul qualifies
The moderators' tips spell out why the line is strict: "If we allowed 'Show HN' on all those things, nearly every post would be a Show HN."
How should you write a Show HN title?
Start the title with "Show HN:", then the product name and a plain statement of what it does. Hacker News titles are capped at 80 characters, which the moderator dang has confirmed in a thread, so the description has to be short. Skip uppercase, exclamation points and claims about how good it is.
The general guidelines ask submitters not to "make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is." Apply the same rule to your product: a title that reads like an ad gets read like one. The format most Show HN posts follow is Show HN: Name - what it does, where the part after the name is the one sentence a developer needs to decide whether to click.
Compare two titles for the same tool:
Show HN: Revolutionary AI-powered platform that transforms your workflow says nothing a reader can check.
Show HN: [name] - compare two Postgres schemas and print the migration tells them what it does and who it's for.
If the product has an obvious comparison readers will make anyway, naming it is fine ("a self-hosted alternative to X"), because it answers the first question in the thread before anyone asks it.
What should the Show HN post text say?
Put a short text in the post explaining how you came to build it, what it does and what's different about it. The moderators' tips say this "tends to seed discussion in a good direction," and that without a clear statement of what the project does, "the discussion will consist of 'I can't tell what this is'."
The tips linked from the Show HN guidelines are specific, and each one is worth following:
Give the backstory: why you built it and what problem you hit.
State plainly what the project is or does, in the first lines.
Link any earlier Hacker News threads that are relevant. "Readers like those."
"Drop any language that sounds like marketing or sales. On HN, that is an instant turnoff." Personal stories and technical details work better.
Write the text yourself. A March 2026 edit to the tips says not to use an LLM to generate or edit any of it, "not even a tiny bit," because readers spot it and push back.
Don't use your company or product name as your username. It reads as a brand, not a person.
Put an email address in your profile if you're comfortable, so the moderators can reach you, including to send a repost invite.
If your text doesn't show at the top of the submission, add it as the first comment. The tips say either way is fine. A useful post text runs a few short paragraphs: the problem, what you built, how it works under the hood, what it doesn't do yet, and what feedback you want.
How do you make the product easy to try before you post?
Remove every step between the click and the product working. The guidelines ask for no "signups or emails," and the moderators' tips add that readers "get ornery if you make them jump through hoops." Then check that the page a reader lands on loads, works and survives a traffic spike, because you get one first impression per reader.
Work through this list the day before:
Give readers a way in without an account. A public demo, a sandbox workspace with sample data, a read-only example, or an install command that runs locally all count. If an account is unavoidable, allow sign-in with an existing provider and skip email confirmation for the demo.
Land them on the product, not the marketing page. If your homepage is a pitch, link the demo URL in the post instead.
Test the whole path in a private window on a phone and a laptop: the page loads, the main button does something, forms submit, and nothing errors in the console.
Check that the site sends the right signals to crawlers and link previews: no leftover noindex, a real <title>, and an Open Graph image, since people will share the thread elsewhere.
Prepare for load. If the post reaches the front page, visitors can arrive in a burst. Cache the landing page, check your database connection limits, and put rate limits on anything that costs you money per request, such as an AI API call.
Decide what to do if it breaks. A one-line status note on the page and an honest reply in the thread go down better than silence.
Where does a Show HN appear, and how does it reach the show page?
Every Show HN appears on the newest and shownew pages the moment you submit it. The guidelines say that "once it clears a small points threshold, it will appear on the show page in the top bar." Hacker News does not publish the threshold, and posts that get enough votes can also reach the front page.
The FAQ explains ranking in one line: "The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted." Other factors include user flags, anti-abuse software, software that demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action. Karma doesn't help: asked whether posts by users with more karma rank higher, the FAQ answers "No."
On links: the Show HN guidelines say nothing about whether the link to your site is followed. Reading the show and shownew pages' HTML in September 2026, title links on low-scoring posts carried rel="nofollow" and every post above 38 points on the show page did not. One post at 18 points still had it and another didn't, so the rule isn't a published points cutoff. Treat Show HN as a way to get readers and feedback, and don't plan on the link. The comparison of product launch platforms by cost, wait and backlink sets Show HN beside the others.
Why was my Show HN flagged or marked dead?
A post shows [flagged] when users flagged it as breaking the guidelines or not belonging on Hacker News. It shows [dead] when software, user flags or moderators killed it. On Show HN, the usual causes are a product people cannot try, marketing language, an account used mainly to promote its own links, and booster comments from friends.
What you see
What it means
What you can do
Post is on shownew but not show
It hasn't cleared the small points threshold yet
Wait; don't ask for votes
[flagged]
Users flagged it as off topic or against the guidelines
Check it against the Show HN rules before you post anything again
[dead]
Killed by software, flags or moderators; hidden by default
Other users with enough karma can vouch for it; don't delete and repost
Post ranks lower than one with fewer points
Flags, anti-abuse software or moderator action
Nothing to do on your side except follow the rules
Voting rings are the fastest way to get buried. The FAQ says Hacker News will "penalize or ban submissions, accounts, and sites" that ask for upvotes, and asking for comments gets detected too: readers "will detect it, flag it, and use unkind words like 'spam'." The moderators' tips add that friends' booster comments are treated as spam and draw flames.
Reposting has its own rule. A story that hasn't had significant attention in the last year or so can be reposted a small number of times, otherwise it's buried as a duplicate. For a new version of your product, the tips say to post only when it is significantly different, link the previous Show HN in a comment, explain what changed, and keep it to "once or twice a year" at most.
How do you run the thread on launch day?
Be in the thread from the minute you post until the questions stop. The guidelines require the project to be something "you're around to discuss," and on Hacker News the thread is the launch: readers judge the product by how you answer. Reply to technical questions with detail, admit limits plainly, and thank people for bug reports.
A few habits that keep the thread useful:
Post when you have the next several hours free, not before a flight or a meeting.
Answer criticism with facts or a fix. The guidelines ask commenters not to be "gratuitously negative," but you'll still get blunt feedback, and a calm reply reads well to everyone else scrolling past.
Fix small bugs during the thread and say so in a reply. Readers notice.
Don't argue about votes or ranking. The guidelines ask users not to comment on voting, and it never helps.
Keep a list of every feature request and objection. Threads close to new comments after two weeks, but the feedback is the main thing you came for.
Show HN works best as one day in a wider launch. The launch week plan spaces it apart from Product Hunt and the other platforms so each thread gets your full attention.
Check the site before you post
Most of what goes wrong in a Show HN thread is visible before you submit: a button that does nothing, a form that won't send, a JavaScript error on load, a signup flow that breaks halfway. Run the free scan on LaunchScaler with your product's URL and no account. It runs 156 checks across 6 of its 7 categories at no cost, including whether the main call to action is a dead control, whether forms can submit, whether the signup flow breaks before completion, uncaught JavaScript errors on load, server response time, and leftover noindex or robots.txt blocks. Fix what it flags, test the demo path once more in a private window, then post.
No. The guidelines say "Don't post landing pages or fundraisers" and tell you to come back once people can try the product. Submit it as a regular story instead if it is worth discussing.
03
Why was my Show HN flagged?
[flagged] means users flagged the post as breaking the guidelines or not belonging on Hacker News. On Show HN the usual causes are something people cannot try, promotional language, and booster comments from friends.
04
How many points does a Show HN need to reach the show page?
Hacker News does not publish the number. Every Show HN appears on shownew, and the guidelines say it moves to the show page once it clears a small points threshold.
05
Can I post a Show HN more than once?
Only for a version that is significantly different, not an incremental upgrade. The moderators' tips say to link the previous Show HN in a comment, explain what changed, and keep it to once or twice a year at most.
A soft launch opens your SaaS to a small group to find what breaks; a hard launch is a public, dated push. Goals, audience, risk and a sequence using both.
