Indie Launch Radar — Show HN Early-Traction Scanner

Find early-stage SaaS and indie products gaining real organic traction on Hacker News — before they hit everyone's radar.

This Actor scans Show HN launches and ranks them by a traction score that rewards velocity (points per hour) and genuine discussion (comment-to-point ratio), not just raw vote counts. It's built for indie hackers, scouts, and investors who want signal, not noise.

What it does

• Pulls Show HN launches from the last N days via the public Hacker News (Algolia) API
• Filters out low-signal posts (configurable minimum points & comments)
• Optional keyword filter (e.g. ai, b2b, developer tools)
• Scores each launch 0–10 on organic traction and sorts best-first

No proxy, no login, no API key required.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
daysBack	integer	7	How many days of launches to scan (1–30)
minPoints	integer	20	Discard launches below this many points
minComments	integer	3	Discard launches below this many comments
keywords	array	[]	Keep only titles matching a keyword (empty = all)
maxResults	integer	100	Cap on launches returned

Example input

{
  "daysBack": 7,
  "minPoints": 30,
  "minComments": 5,
  "keywords": ["ai", "saas", "b2b"],
  "maxResults": 50
}

Output

Each item in the dataset:

{
  "title": "MyTool – open-source X for Y",
  "url": "https://mytool.com",
  "points": 142,
  "numComments": 38,
  "ageHours": 19.2,
  "tractionScore": 7.4,
  "author": "janedoe",
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=00000000",
  "createdAt": "2026-06-01T10:00:00.000Z"
}

A SUMMARY record is also saved to the key-value store with scan counts and the top launch.

How the traction score works

tractionScore (0–10) blends three organic signals:

• Velocity (40%) — points per hour since posting. The strongest early signal.
• Discussion (30%) — comments per point. Real engagement, hard to fake.
• Volume (30%) — log-scaled point floor so tiny posts can't top the list.

Use cases

• Spot indie SaaS launches in their first 24–72h window
• Build a weekly "launch radar" newsletter or dashboard
• Source deals or competitive intel by keyword/category