HN front-page momentum (daily)
Daily momentum ranking of the Hacker News front page. The top 120 stories are read from the official keyless Hacker News API (https://github.com/HackerNews/API); each story is scored for engagement velocity (points per hour since posting) and discussion intensity (comments per point), with front-page rank, score, comment count, story type (story / show_hn / ask_hn), normalized link domain, the canonical HN discussion URL, and a deterministic rule-based topic tag (ai, devtools, infrastructure, security, web, data, science, hardware, mobile, business, programming, other). Primary key: (date, story_id). Cadence: daily; each snapshot reflects the front page at fetch time. Nullability: score and comments are never null (0 allowed); hn_url is never null. Note: the external article URL is intentionally not stored — numeric URL slugs trip the hub PII screen (SEC EDGAR precedent); the link domain plus the HN discussion URL identify every story. Sample use: order by momentum_rank for what is accelerating fastest, or filter primary_topic = 'ai'.
- Rows
- 119
- Columns
- 17
- Source cadence
- Daily
- Last refreshed
- Sep 25, 2026
- Theme
- technology
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| date | string | — |
| fetched_at | string | — |
| story_id | integer | — |
| rank | integer | — |
| momentum_rank | integer | Rank of the story by points_per_hour descending (1 = fastest riser). Independent of the front-page rank. (unit: rank) |
| title | string | — |
| hn_url | string | Canonical Hacker News discussion URL for the story (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id= <story_id>); never null. The external article URL is intentionally not stored. (unit: url) |
| domain | string | Normalized link domain (lowercased, www. stripped); text self-posts map to news.ycombinator.com. |
| author | string | — |
| story_type | string | show_hn for 'Show HN:' posts, ask_hn for 'Ask HN:' posts, otherwise story. |
| primary_topic | string | Deterministic rule-based topic tag from title + URL keywords (ai, security, infrastructure, devtools, data, web, programming, hardware, mobile, science, business, other); first matching rule wins. Indicative, not a classifier. |
| score | integer | — |
| comments | integer | — |
| age_hours | float | — |
| points_per_hour | float | Engagement velocity: story score divided by age in hours (age floored at 0.05h). Higher = accelerating faster on the front page. (unit: points/hour) |
| comments_per_point | float | Discussion intensity: comment count divided by score (score floored at 1). Higher = more discussed relative to votes. (unit: ratio) |
| posted_at | string | — |
First 10 sample rows — a preview, not the complete dataset.
| date | fetched_at | story_id | rank | momentum_rank | title | hn_url | domain | author | story_type | primary_topic | score | comments | age_hours | points_per_hour | comments_per_point | posted_at |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-25 | 2026-09-25T00:08:10.898816+00:00 | 49,831,968 | 1 | 1 | F-Droid 2.0 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49831968 | f-droid.org | daveoc64 | story | mobile | 882 | 249 | 8.7 | 101.383 | 0.282 | 2026-09-24T15:26:12+0000 |
| 2026-09-25 | 2026-09-25T00:08:10.898816+00:00 | 49,837,006 | 9 | 2 | Show HN: Koi.rest – watch some fish and regain your balance | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49837006 | koi.rest | hxii | show_hn | other | 101 | 25 | 2.59 | 39.064 | 0.248 | 2026-09-24T21:33:03+0000 |
| 2026-09-25 | 2026-09-25T00:08:10.898816+00:00 | 49,838,034 | 12 | 3 | GitLab Outage | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49838034 | status.gitlab.com | kunley | story | devtools | 32 | 10 | 0.96 | 33.421 | 0.312 | 2026-09-24T23:10:44+0000 |
| 2026-09-25 | 2026-09-25T00:08:10.898816+00:00 | 49,805,509 | 85 | 4 | GPT-6 Sol and Luna | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49805509 | openai.com | OfficialTurkey | story | ai | 1,762 | 841 | 54.13 | 32.553 | 0.477 | 2026-09-22T18:00:34+0000 |
| 2026-09-25 | 2026-09-25T00:08:10.898816+00:00 | 49,803,892 | 89 | 5 | Claude Opus 5.5 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49803892 | anthropic.com | km144 | story | ai | 1,791 | 1,116 | 55.65 | 32.182 | 0.623 | 2026-09-22T16:29:05+0000 |
| 2026-09-25 | 2026-09-25T00:08:10.898816+00:00 | 49,836,374 | 30 | 6 | Opus 5.5 is good at explainer videos | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49836374 | launchvideo.io | iacguy | story | other | 110 | 80 | 3.66 | 30.082 | 0.727 | 2026-09-24T20:28:47+0000 |
| 2026-09-25 | 2026-09-25T00:08:10.898816+00:00 | 49,836,419 | 14 | 7 | California is chasing wealth that has feet | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49836419 | blog.landeconomics.org | idbnstra | story | other | 103 | 286 | 3.56 | 28.926 | 2.777 | 2026-09-24T20:34:32+0000 |
| 2026-09-25 | 2026-09-25T00:08:10.898816+00:00 | 49,819,221 | 101 | 8 | Italian parliament votes for return to nuclear energy | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49819221 | apnews.com | geox | story | other | 872 | 757 | 31.03 | 28.1 | 0.868 | 2026-09-23T17:06:16+0000 |
| 2026-09-25 | 2026-09-25T00:08:10.898816+00:00 | 49,832,406 | 44 | 9 | GitHub has not removed malicious imitation software after 3 weeks | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832406 | successfulsoftware.net | hermitcrab | story | devtools | 233 | 99 | 8.3 | 28.086 | 0.425 | 2026-09-24T15:50:26+0000 |
| 2026-09-25 | 2026-09-25T00:08:10.898816+00:00 | 49,832,938 | 4 | 10 | Why is the liver so weirdly regenerative? | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832938 | dynomight.substack.com | jbotz | story | other | 210 | 136 | 7.75 | 27.086 | 0.648 | 2026-09-24T16:23:00+0000 |
Profiled Sep 25, 2026 from snapshot 20260925T000940Z-e56e52c89fe0
Measured- Completeness
- 100%
- Rows
- 119
- Columns
- 17
- Columns with gaps
- 0
| Column | Missing | Distinct | Range | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| datevarchar | 0% | 1 | — |
|
| fetched_atvarchar | 0% | 1 | — |
|
| story_idbigint | 0% | 117 | 49,777,158 → 49,838,034median 49,826,221 | 4 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| rankbigint | 0% | 119 | 1 → 120median 61 | 4 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| momentum_rankbigint | 0% | 119 | 1 → 119median 60 | 4 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| titlevarchar | 0% | 115 | — |
|
| hn_urlvarchar | 0% | 131 | — |
|
| domainvarchar | 0% | 98 | — |
|
| authorvarchar | 0% | 117 | — |
|
| story_typevarchar | 0% | 2 | — |
|
| primary_topicvarchar | 0% | 10 | — |
|
| scorebigint | 0% | 105 | 3 → 1,791median 87 | 3 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| commentsbigint | 0% | 74 | 0 → 1,116median 38 | 2 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| age_hoursdouble | 0% | 115 | 0.96 → 104.05median 19.79 | 4 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| points_per_hourdouble | 0% | 143 | 0.258 → 101.38median 5.55 | 4 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| comments_per_pointdouble | 0% | 118 | 0 → 2.78median 0.39 | 2 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| posted_atvarchar | 0% | 99 | — |
|
- Current
20260925T000940Z-e56e52c89fe0 · sha256 e56e52c89fe0…
119 rows · first snapshot
Point any LLM at the metadata endpoint — the documentation above is machine-readable too (JSON-LD + Croissant).
curl "https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/hn_signals/hn_frontpage_momentum_daily" | jq '{title, rows, columns_count, license}'import requests
ds = requests.get("https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/hn_signals/hn_frontpage_momentum_daily").json()
print(ds["title"], ds["rows"], "rows")
# Sample rows for an LLM context window
for row in ds.get("sample_rows", [])[:5]:
print(row)API endpoint: https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/hn_signals/hn_frontpage_momentum_daily
Tip: fetch /llms.txt for the full machine-readable catalog.
Where this data comes from and what was made from it. Other people's work shows as counts; only shared projects are named.
Cite this snapshot
Pinned to snapshot 20260925T000940Z-e56e52c89fe0 and its content hash, so readers get exactly the data you used.
Hacker News (agent-curated signals). (2026). HN front-page momentum (daily) [Data set, snapshot 20260925T000940Z-e56e52c89fe0, sha256 e56e52c89fe0]. Datazimuts. Retrieved 2026-09-25, from https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/hn_signals/hn_frontpage_momentum_daily?snapshot=20260925T000940Z-e56e52c89fe0
@misc{dz_hn_signals_hn_frontpage_momentum_daily_e56e52c8,
title = {{HN front-page momentum (daily)}},
author = {{Hacker News (agent-curated signals)}},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Datazimuts},
howpublished = {\url{https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/hn_signals/hn_frontpage_momentum_daily?snapshot=20260925T000940Z-e56e52c89fe0}},
note = {Snapshot 20260925T000940Z-e56e52c89fe0, sha256 e56e52c89fe0b715ea2ff61280dd5f9f542ea6f0c3b940bafa6aed6f226e12d3; accessed 2026-09-25}
}Embed a table or a chart
Paste this into any page. The embed is pinned to the same snapshot, follows the reader's light or dark setting, and always shows the source, license and a link back.
<iframe src="https://datazimuts.com/embed/chart?dataset=hn_signals%2Fhn_frontpage_momentum_daily&lang=en&theme=auto&snapshot=20260925T000940Z-e56e52c89fe0&x=date&y=story_id&agg=avg" title="HN front-page momentum (daily)" width="100%" height="380" style="border:0" loading="lazy"></iframe>
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