feat: add Hacker News and GitHub backends to alert plugin

Hacker News (hn) uses Algolia search_by_date API for stories,
appends point count to title, falls back to HN discussion URL
when no external link. GitHub (gh) searches repositories sorted
by recently updated, shows star count and truncated description.
Both routed through SOCKS5 proxy via _urlopen.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs/CHEATSHEET.md

@@ -345,13 +345,13 @@ No API credentials needed (uses public GQL endpoint).
 !alert history <name> [n]        # Show recent results (default 5)
 ```
 
-Searches keywords across 14 backends: YouTube (yt), Twitch (tw), SearXNG (sx),
+Searches keywords across 16 backends: YouTube (yt), Twitch (tw), SearXNG (sx),
 Reddit (rd), Mastodon (ft), DuckDuckGo (dg), Google News (gn), Kick (kk),
 Dailymotion (dm), PeerTube (pt), Bluesky (bs), Lemmy (ly), Odysee (od),
-Archive.org (ia). Names: lowercase alphanumeric + hyphens, 1-20 chars. Keywords:
+Archive.org (ia), Hacker News (hn), GitHub (gh). Names: lowercase alphanumeric +
-1-100 chars. Max 20 alerts/channel. Polls every 5min. Format: `[name/yt] Title -- URL`,
+hyphens, 1-20 chars. Keywords: 1-100 chars. Max 20 alerts/channel. Polls every
-etc. No API credentials needed. Persists across restarts. History stored in
+5min. Format: `[name/yt] Title -- URL`, etc. No API credentials needed. Persists
-`data/alert_history.db`.
+across restarts. History stored in `data/alert_history.db`.
 
 ## SearX
 

docs/USAGE.md

@@ -696,13 +696,16 @@ Platforms searched:
 - **Lemmy** (`ly`) -- Federated post search across 4 instances (no auth required)
 - **Odysee** (`od`) -- LBRY JSON-RPC claim search: video, audio, documents (no auth required)
 - **Archive.org** (`ia`) -- Internet Archive advanced search, sorted by date (no auth required)
+- **Hacker News** (`hn`) -- Algolia search API, sorted by date (no auth required)
+- **GitHub** (`gh`) -- Repository search API, sorted by recently updated (no auth required)
 
 Polling and announcements:
 
 - Alerts are polled every 5 minutes by default
 - On `add`, existing results are recorded without announcing (prevents flood)
 - New results announced as `[name/<tag>] Title -- URL` where tag is one of:
-  `yt`, `tw`, `sx`, `rd`, `ft`, `dg`, `gn`, `kk`, `dm`, `pt`, `bs`, `ly`, `od`, `ia`
+  `yt`, `tw`, `sx`, `rd`, `ft`, `dg`, `gn`, `kk`, `dm`, `pt`, `bs`, `ly`, `od`, `ia`,
+  `hn`, `gh`
 - Titles are truncated to 80 characters
 - Each platform maintains its own seen list (capped at 200 per platform)
 - 5 consecutive errors doubles the poll interval (max 1 hour)

plugins/alert.py

@@ -61,6 +61,8 @@ _LEMMY_INSTANCES = [
 _LEMMY_TIMEOUT = 4
 _ODYSEE_API = "https://api.na-backend.odysee.com/api/v1/proxy"
 _ARCHIVE_SEARCH_URL = "https://archive.org/advancedsearch.php"
+_HN_SEARCH_URL = "https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search_by_date"
+_GITHUB_SEARCH_URL = "https://api.github.com/search/repositories"
 
 # -- Module-level tracking ---------------------------------------------------
 
@@ -1002,6 +1004,92 @@ def _search_archive(keyword: str) -> list[dict]:
     return results
 
 
+# -- Hacker News search (blocking) ------------------------------------------
+
+def _search_hackernews(keyword: str) -> list[dict]:
+    """Search Hacker News via Algolia API, sorted by date. Blocking."""
+    import urllib.parse
+
+    params = urllib.parse.urlencode({
+        "query": keyword, "tags": "story", "hitsPerPage": "25",
+    })
+    url = f"{_HN_SEARCH_URL}?{params}"
+
+    req = urllib.request.Request(url, method="GET")
+    req.add_header("User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; derp-bot)")
+
+    resp = _urlopen(req, timeout=_FETCH_TIMEOUT)
+    raw = resp.read()
+    resp.close()
+
+    data = json.loads(raw)
+    results: list[dict] = []
+    for hit in data.get("hits") or []:
+        object_id = hit.get("objectID", "")
+        if not object_id:
+            continue
+        title = hit.get("title", "")
+        # External URL if available, otherwise HN discussion link
+        item_url = hit.get("url") or f"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id={object_id}"
+        date = _parse_date(hit.get("created_at", ""))
+        points = hit.get("points")
+        if points:
+            title += f" ({points}pts)"
+        results.append({
+            "id": object_id,
+            "title": title,
+            "url": item_url,
+            "date": date,
+            "extra": "",
+        })
+    return results
+
+
+# -- GitHub search (blocking) -----------------------------------------------
+
+def _search_github(keyword: str) -> list[dict]:
+    """Search GitHub repositories via public API. Blocking."""
+    import urllib.parse
+
+    params = urllib.parse.urlencode({
+        "q": keyword, "sort": "updated", "order": "desc", "per_page": "25",
+    })
+    url = f"{_GITHUB_SEARCH_URL}?{params}"
+
+    req = urllib.request.Request(url, method="GET")
+    req.add_header("Accept", "application/vnd.github+json")
+    req.add_header("User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; derp-bot)")
+
+    resp = _urlopen(req, timeout=_FETCH_TIMEOUT)
+    raw = resp.read()
+    resp.close()
+
+    data = json.loads(raw)
+    results: list[dict] = []
+    for repo in data.get("items") or []:
+        repo_id = str(repo.get("id", ""))
+        if not repo_id:
+            continue
+        full_name = repo.get("full_name", "")
+        description = repo.get("description") or ""
+        html_url = repo.get("html_url", "")
+        stars = repo.get("stargazers_count", 0)
+        title = full_name
+        if description:
+            title += f": {_truncate(description, 50)}"
+        if stars:
+            title += f" [{stars}*]"
+        date = _parse_date(repo.get("updated_at", ""))
+        results.append({
+            "id": repo_id,
+            "title": title,
+            "url": html_url,
+            "date": date,
+            "extra": "",
+        })
+    return results
+
+
 # -- Backend registry -------------------------------------------------------
 
 _BACKENDS: dict[str, callable] = {
@@ -1019,6 +1107,8 @@ _BACKENDS: dict[str, callable] = {
     "ly": _search_lemmy,
     "od": _search_odysee,
     "ia": _search_archive,
+    "hn": _search_hackernews,
+    "gh": _search_github,
 }