Mentions Monitor — Hacker News, GitHub & Reddit Alerts

Know the moment your product, brand or competitor gets mentioned where developers talk.

A single HN comment can send you a thousand signups — or a takedown you'll want to answer within the hour. This Actor watches Hacker News (stories + comments), GitHub (issues + PRs) and Reddit for your keywords, and with diff mode returns only mentions that weren't there last time. Schedule it daily, wire a Slack/email/webhook integration, and never miss the conversation again.

SaaS mention-tracking tools charge $50-100+/month. This does the developer-channel slice of that job for cents, on your schedule, with raw data you own.

Sources

Source	What's searched	Setup
Hacker News	Stories and comments, via the official open Algolia API	None
GitHub	Issues and pull requests mentioning your keyword	None (optional free token raises rate limits)
Reddit	Posts, via Reddit's official data API	Your own free Reddit API credentials (2-minute setup, guide below)

Official APIs only — no scraping tricks, no proxies, nothing that breaks tomorrow.

Use cases

• Founders & indie hackers: get pinged when your product hits HN — the first hour of replies matters.
• DevRel & marketing: track your brand and your competitors' across the channels developers actually use.
• Sales: someone asking "alternatives to X?" on Reddit is a warm lead.
• Open-source maintainers: find issues in other repos where your library is being discussed or misused.
• Investors/analysts: mention velocity as a traction signal.

Input

{
    "queries": ["mybrand", "competitor-x", "mydomain.com"],
    "sources": ["hackernews", "github"],
    "sinceDays": 30,
    "newMentionsOnly": true
}

Parameter	Type	Description
queries	Array (required)	Keywords, brand/product names or domains. Each is searched separately.
sources	Array	hackernews, github, reddit (default: HN + GitHub).
sinceDays	Integer	Look-back window (default 30).
maxItemsPerQuery	Integer	Cap per query & source (default 100).
newMentionsOnly	Boolean	Diff mode — only mentions not seen in previous runs. First run primes the memory.
trackNewMentions	Boolean	Adds isNew to every mention (default true).
computeSignals	Boolean	One summary item per query (default true).
githubToken	Secret	Optional; raises GitHub search limits and enables >100 results. No scopes needed.
redditClientId / redditClientSecret	Secret	Enables Reddit. Create a free "script" app at reddit.com/prefs/apps.

Output

One item per mention, unified across sources:

{
    "type": "mention",
    "source": "hackernews",
    "query": "mybrand",
    "kind": "comment",
    "title": "Show HN: Something relevant",
    "text": "We switched to mybrand last month and...",
    "author": "pg",
    "points": 120,
    "numComments": 45,
    "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=999",
    "createdAt": "2026-07-01T00:00:00Z",
    "isNew": true
}

GitHub mentions carry repo, Reddit mentions carry subreddit. Plus one mention_signals item per query: totals by source, new since last run, newest mention date, and the top mention by engagement.

Quick-start recipes

Daily brand alert (schedule + Slack):

{ "queries": ["mybrand"], "sources": ["hackernews", "github", "reddit"], "newMentionsOnly": true }

Competitor watch:

{ "queries": ["competitor-a", "competitor-b"], "sinceDays": 7 }

"Alternatives to X" lead finder:

{ "queries": ["alternative to competitor-x"], "sources": ["reddit", "hackernews"], "newMentionsOnly": true }

Setting up Reddit (2 minutes, free)

1. Log in to Reddit → https://www.reddit.com/prefs/apps → "create another app".
2. Type: script. Name and redirect URI can be anything (e.g. http://localhost).
3. Copy the client ID (under the app name) and the secret into the Actor input.

This keeps you within Reddit's Data API terms (free tier: 100 requests/min — far more than this Actor needs). Your credentials are stored encrypted by Apify and never leave your account.

FAQ

Why does Reddit need my credentials but HN/GitHub don't? HN's search API (Algolia) and GitHub's search API are open by design. Reddit's data API requires each consumer to register — it's free, and using your own app is what keeps this compliant.

Does it search Reddit comments too? v1 searches posts (title + body). Comment search is on the roadmap.

How does diff mode behave on the first run? Returns everything in the window and primes the memory; from the second run on, only new mentions.

Changelog

1.0

• Initial release: Hacker News + GitHub out of the box, Reddit via your own official API credentials, diff mode with isNew, per-query signals with top mention by engagement.