Daily Show HN competitive intel tracker in Notion

By General Input

Every morning at 9am ET, an agent scans new Show HN launches, picks the ones that compete with your product, and logs structured briefs to a Notion database.

Integrations

  • Hacker News
  • Notion

Type

Agentic Task

Categories

  • Marketing
  • Product

Every morning at 9am ET (cron), build me a competitive intel tracker that watches new Show HN launches and logs the ones in my product space to a Notion database.

During setup, ask me to describe my product space and a few keywords so you know what counts as a competitor (for example: "AI agents for sales", "open-source CRMs", "developer tools for Postgres"). Also ask for the Notion database I want rows written to. The database should have columns for: Date, Product Name, URL, Points, Comment Count, HN Discussion Link, Brief, and Threat Level (low / watch / high). If any columns are missing, tell me which ones to add.

On each run:

1. Use Hacker News "Get Show HN Stories" to pull the latest Show HN story ids.

2. For each story id, use Hacker News "Get Item" to hydrate it with title, URL, author, points, comment count, and self-text. Only consider stories posted in the last 24 hours.

3. Drop anything off-topic. A launch counts as on-topic if its title, link, or self-text clearly overlaps with the product space and keywords I described during setup. When in doubt, lean toward skipping it. Off-topic launches are not logged.

4. For each matching launch, fetch the top few comment threads via "Get Item" so you can read unfiltered community reactions (head-to-head comparisons with existing tools, pricing feedback, criticism, distribution notes).

5. Write a short brief (4 to 8 sentences) covering: what the product does, who it's for, notable feedback or criticism from the comments, and how it overlaps with or differs from my product.

6. Assign a threat level tag: "low" (adjacent or early, not a direct overlap), "watch" (overlapping space, worth tracking), or "high" (direct competitor with real traction or strong reception).

7. Before writing the row, query the Notion database for entries already logged in the last 7 days and skip the launch if it's a duplicate (match on the launch URL or HN discussion link) so the tracker stays clean.

8. Use Notion "Create a Page" in the designated database with one row per matching launch. Fill in Date (today), Product Name, URL (the linked product), Points, Comment Count, HN Discussion Link (the news.ycombinator.com/item?id=… URL), Brief, and Threat Level.

If no launches match on a given day, do nothing (no empty rows, no notification). If anything fails (Notion column mismatch, missing access, etc.), surface a clear error in the run output so I can fix it.

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