producthunt-cli

ph

A command line for Product Hunt.

ph is a single pure-Go binary. It reads public Product Hunt data over plain HTTPS, shapes it into clean records, and prints output that pipes into the rest of your tools.

It reads two planes that share one numeric id and one record shape:

• The web plane reads www.producthunt.com and is the default. Every page is fronted by Cloudflare, so the one anonymous surface it reads is the Atom feed at /feed: the recent launches, no account needed. A walled page returns exit 4.
• The API plane reads api.producthunt.com over GraphQL and reads posts, topics, collections, users, and comments reliably from anywhere. It turns on when PRODUCTHUNT_TOKEN, or PRODUCTHUNT_CLIENT_ID and PRODUCTHUNT_CLIENT_SECRET, are set in the environment. The credentials are free from Product Hunt and are read from the environment only, never a flag.

Because both planes carry the same numeric post id and the same record fields, a feed read and an API read address the same record. Set the credentials and every command gets reliable, or leave them unset and the feed-backed commands still work with no account.

The same package is also a resource-URI driver, so a host program like ant can address Product Hunt as producthunt:// URIs.

Install

go install github.com/tamnd/producthunt-cli/cmd/ph@latest

Or grab a prebuilt binary from the releases, or run the container image:

docker run --rm ghcr.io/tamnd/ph:latest --help

Usage

# free credentials, optional, make every command reliable
export PRODUCTHUNT_TOKEN=...                   # a developer token, or
export PRODUCTHUNT_CLIENT_ID=...               # an API application's
export PRODUCTHUNT_CLIENT_SECRET=...           # client id and secret

ph feed                              # the keyless Atom feed of recent posts
ph posts                             # the post stream (feed when keyless, API when keyed)
ph post brainflow-2                  # one post as a record (by slug or id)
ph post brainflow-2 -o json          # as JSON, ready for jq
ph comments 1173164                  # a post's comment thread (API plane)
ph topic artificial-intelligence     # one topic with its top posts (API plane)
ph topics                            # list topics (API plane)
ph collection best-of-2026           # one collection with its posts (API plane)
ph user @rrhoover                    # one user with the posts they made (API plane)
ph ref id <url>                      # resolve any Product Hunt URL to its id
ph --help                            # the whole command tree

Every command shares one output contract: -o table|markdown|json|jsonl|csv|tsv|url|raw, --fields to pick columns, --template for a custom line, and -n to limit. The default adapts to where output goes (a color-aware table on a terminal, JSONL in a pipe), so the same command reads well by hand and parses cleanly downstream.

Pick a plane with --plane web|api|auto (default auto: the API when credentials are set, the web otherwise). The posts list reads the keyless feed for the newest case and the API for anything filtered or ordered; the topic, collection, user, and comment surfaces are API only. The ref commands are offline and resolve URLs to ids and back with no network at all.

Serve it

The same operations are available over HTTP and as an MCP tool set for agents, with no extra code:

ph serve --addr :7777    # GET /v1/post/brainflow-2  returns NDJSON
ph mcp                   # speak MCP over stdio

Use it as a resource-URI driver

ph registers a producthunt domain the way a program registers a database driver with database/sql. A host enables it with one blank import:

import _ "github.com/tamnd/producthunt-cli/producthunt"

Then ant (or any program that links the package) dereferences producthunt:// URIs without knowing anything about Product Hunt:

ant get producthunt://post/1173164    # fetch the record
ant cat producthunt://post/1173164    # just the description body
ant ls  producthunt://post/1173164    # the edges (comments, topics, makers, hunter)
ant url producthunt://post/1173164    # the addressable URL

Attribution

ph reads public, read-only data only. It does not log in, store credentials, or solve anti-bot challenges, and it is honest about a walled surface rather than working around it. Every record keeps its url, so a downstream view can link back to the source on Product Hunt.

Development

cmd/ph/       thin main: hands cli.NewApp to kit.Run
cli/          assembles the kit App from the producthunt domain
producthunt/  the library: HTTP client, two-plane readers, data models, and domain.go (the driver)
docs/         tago documentation site

make build      # ./bin/ph
make test       # go test ./...
make vet        # go vet ./...

Releasing

Push a version tag and GitHub Actions runs GoReleaser, which builds the archives, Linux packages, the multi-arch GHCR image, checksums, SBOMs, and a cosign signature:

git tag v0.1.0
git push --tags

The Homebrew and Scoop steps self-disable until their tokens exist, so the first release works with no extra secrets.

License

ph is an independent tool and is not affiliated with Product Hunt. Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.