# HN Companion 5 Hacker News commenters recommended HN Companion and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months. **Verdict:** People recommend it for keyboard-first navigation, useful utility features and AI summaries that save time reading long Hacker News threads. The most common caveat is that the summaries are verbose. ## Why people recommend it - Keyboard-first navigation and utility features (2 comments): "You might find those utility features useful even if you ignore the summary sidebar entirely." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46971804)) "bring the familiar keyboard-first navigation, find interesting viewpoints in the threads" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46962943)) - AI summaries of long threads (3 comments): "examine lengthy threads and group them into 3 to 4 topics" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46968096)) "If you love summaries on HN, check out" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48287849)) "The AI summary saves me a ton of time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46964755)) ## What people warn about - Summaries are verbose (1 comments): "My only gripe, after looking for the cached example, is how verbose it is." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46972100)) - Robotic tone loses site personality (1 comments): "It basically kills the entire tone/vibe of the place and makes everything seem like robot-written with no personality." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46971434)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Bigwords.page](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bigwords-page.md): 45 recommend - [Jmail](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jmail.md): 39 recommend - [Scroll Wikipedia like TikTok](https://hackerapproved.com/p/scroll-wikipedia-like-tiktok.md): 18 recommend - [MyTinyCafe](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mytinycafe.md): 12 recommend - [Wikipedia doomscroll feed](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wikipedia-as-a-doomscrollable-social-media-feed.md): 12 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "HN Companion", https://hackerapproved.com/p/hn-companion/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).