Reply-Worthy HN & Stack Overflow Threads to Discord (GPT, n8n)

Reply-Worthy HN & Stack Overflow Threads to Discord (GPT, n8n)

Have an eye for great community questions—but not the time to find, assess, and write responses? This n8n workflow searches Hacker News and Stack Overflow, asks a GPT-style model if a real reply would genuinely help, and then drafts a non-marketing response digest that it posts to Discord. Nothing is ever published automatically—only a digest for you to read.

What this workflow does

• Runs daily on a schedule (or manually) to check for new threads.
• Builds per-keyword searches and queries:
  • Hacker News via the Hacker News Algolia API
  • Stack Exchange via the Advanced Search API for Stack Overflow
• Normalizes and filters results: removes duplicates, ignores old items, skips low-engagement/downvoted posts, and excludes Stack Overflow questions that are closed or already answered.
• Checks an n8n Data Table (`community_threads`) to avoid reprocessing threads previously evaluated.
• Uses an OpenAI-compatible chat model twice:
  • First, decides if a reply would be truly helpful (or returns NOT_WORTH_POSTING).
  • Second, drafts a non-marketing reply and formats a character-limited digest.
• Sends the digest to Discord via webhook and upserts one row per judged thread into the Data Table.

Use cases

• Automation engineers who want to stay active on HN/Stack Overflow without constant manual browsing.
• SaaS operators tracking domain keywords and preparing thoughtful, technically accurate responses.
• n8n builders who want GPT-assisted triage for community threads and a Discord inbox of “reply candidates.”

Technical details

• n8n workflow with nodes including if, set, code, no op, merge, and discord.
• Requires an OpenAI-compatible API credential for the model that judges fit and drafts replies.
• Setup includes Data Table community_threads with columns: thread_key, source, title, url, verdict, seen_on.
• Uses a Discord incoming webhook as the delivery channel.