Read Product Hunt from your terminal — works token-free for the daily skim, unlocks a launch-day cockpit and a marketer research desk in one onboarding step.
A two-tier CLI for Product Hunt. The public Atom feed works with zero setup. A single producthunt auth onboard walks you through generating a free personal developer token (callback-URL trick included) to unlock the full GraphQL surface — posts, topics, collections, comments, viewer — plus the launch-day cockpit (trajectories, benchmarks, side-by-side compare, comment question-triage) and the marketer research desk (category snapshot, brand-mention grep, lookalike, launch calendar) that PH's UI has never offered.
Learn more at Product Hunt.
Authentication
Product Hunt's GraphQL API supports two auth modes; the CLI handles both. Recommended for personal use: visit https://www.producthunt.com/v2/oauth/applications, create an application (the redirect URL field is required by the form but unused for personal-token flow — set it to https://localhost/callback), then scroll to the bottom of the app page and click Create Token to generate a developer token that never expires. Set PRODUCT_HUNT_TOKEN=<your-token> or run producthunt auth onboard for an interactive walkthrough. For CI/automation, the alternate mode is OAuth client_credentials: set PRODUCT_HUNT_CLIENT_ID and PRODUCT_HUNT_CLIENT_SECRET from the same app page; the CLI exchanges them for an access token internally and refreshes on 401 (note: under OAuth client_credentials, the whoami command returns null because the public scope has no user context). The public Atom feed (producthunt feed) needs no token at all.
Quick Start
# Token-free first read — the public Atom feed surfaces the latest 5 launches
producthunt feed --count 5
# Interactive setup for the personal developer token (includes the callback URL trick)
producthunt auth onboard
# Confirms the token works and shows your remaining complexity-points budget
producthunt doctor
# GraphQL-backed snapshot of today's top launches with votes, comments, and topics
producthunt today
# Full detail for a single launch by slug — agent-friendly JSON
producthunt posts get notion --json
# Backfill the local store so trajectories, benchmarks, and offline search work
producthunt sync --resource posts --posted-after 2026-04-01
Unique Features
These capabilities aren't available in any other tool for this API.
Founder launch-day cockpit
-
posts launch-day — Renders your launch's votes-over-time trajectory side-by-side with today's top 5 launches — the answer to 'am I catching up to the leader.' Sync-driven, refreshes from the local store.
Reach for this on launch day when a maker asks 'how am I tracking vs the leaders' — the side-by-side trajectories replace ten tabs.
producthunt posts launch-day my-launch-slug --json
-
posts benchmark — Reports percentile curves at hour-N for top-10 and top-50 launches in a topic, computed from accumulated local history. Tells a founder if their hour-6 votes are 'good' for their category.
Use before launching to set realistic targets, or during launch to know whether a slow start is normal for the category or a real problem.
producthunt posts benchmark --topic artificial-intelligence --hour 6 --json
-
posts trajectory — Plots a single launch's votes-over-time from local snapshots. Foundational for launch-day-tracker; also useful standalone for retro analysis after the fact.
Reach for this when reviewing a past launch or competitor — the curve shows momentum that a single end-of-day vote count hides.
producthunt posts trajectory my-launch-slug --json
-
posts questions — Surfaces only comments that look like real questions (regex ? plus heuristic verbs like 'how does', 'what's the', 'can it'), ranked by vote count. Cuts hundreds of launch-day comments down to the ones that need a maker's reply.
Use during or after launch day to identify which comments deserve a real reply versus which are cheerleading or spam.
producthunt posts questions my-launch-slug --json
-
posts compare — Column-aligned comparison of two or more launches: votes, comments, topics, tagline, url, launch-time delta. Replaces juggling browser tabs.
Pick this when a founder is benchmarking their launch against precedents or a marketer is triangulating between similar competitive launches.
producthunt posts compare cursor-ide windsurf-ide claude-code --json
Marketer research desk
-
category snapshot — Slide-deck-ready brief for a topic over a window: leaderboard + momentum delta vs prior window + most active poster handles + top emerging tagline tags.
Reach for this on weekly category-research cadence — the single-output brief replaces opening 30 launch pages by hand.
producthunt category snapshot --topic artificial-intelligence --window weekly --agent --select leaderboard,momentum_delta
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posts grep — Searches taglines and descriptions of launches in a window for a term — your brand, a competitor's brand, a category keyword. Returns matching launches with the matched snippet.
Use this as a recurring brand-mention monitor or to find competitive launches that name your category in their pitch.
producthunt posts grep --term "\\bclaude\\b" --since 7d --topic developer-tools --json
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posts lookalike — Given a launch slug, finds the most similar prior launches by topic overlap plus tagline FTS rank. Builds a competitive set automatically.
Reach for this to build a competitive set quickly or to find precedent launches when planning your own positioning.
producthunt posts lookalike notion --json --select edges.node.name,edges.node.tagline
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launches calendar — Shows what launched what day in a week (and prior weeks for context), with hour-of-day distribution. Helps a founder pick a strong launch slot.
Use before scheduling a launch to find a less-crowded day or hour in your topic.
producthunt launches calendar --topic artificial-intelligence --week 18 --json
Cross-persona monitoring
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topics watch — Detects new posts crossing a vote threshold in a topic since the last sync. Synthesizes an offline subscription against an API that has none.
Schedule this in cron to alert on notable new launches in a vertical without hammering the GraphQL endpoint.
producthunt topics watch artificial-intelligence --min-votes 200 --json
Agent-native plumbing
-
posts since — Local-first time-window query: posts since 2h, posts since 24h. Falls through to live GraphQL if the window extends past the last sync.
Reach for this from agentic flows that ask 'what's new on Product Hunt' — the local-first behavior keeps token costs low and the fall-through guarantees freshness.
producthunt posts since 6h --json --select edges.node.name,edges.node.votesCount
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context — Returns a single JSON blob covering top posts in a window, top comments, topic followers, and your viewer status. One call answers 'what's the state of this topic right now' for an agent.
Use as the first call in an agentic Product Hunt workflow — one snapshot replaces 'list posts then list comments then check viewer'.
producthunt context --topic artificial-intelligence --since 24h --json
Usage
Run producthunt-pp-cli --help for the full command reference and flag list.
Commands
feed
Public Atom feed of featured Product Hunt launches (no auth required)
producthunt-pp-cli feed get - Fetch the public Atom feed of recent featured launches; needs no token
Output Formats
# Human-readable table (default in terminal, JSON when piped)
producthunt-pp-cli feed
# JSON for scripting and agents
producthunt-pp-cli feed --json
# Filter to specific fields
producthunt-pp-cli feed --json --select id,name,status
# Dry run — show the request without sending
producthunt-pp-cli feed --dry-run
# Agent mode — JSON + compact + no prompts in one flag
producthunt-pp-cli feed --agent
Agent Usage
This CLI is designed for AI agent consumption:
- Non-interactive - never prompts, every input is a flag
- Pipeable -
--json output to stdout, errors to stderr
- Filterable -
--select id,name returns only fields you need
- Previewable -
--dry-run shows the request without sending
- Read-only by default - this CLI does not create, update, delete, publish, send, or mutate remote resources
- Offline-friendly - sync/search commands can use the local SQLite store when available
- Agent-safe by default - no colors or formatting unless
--human-friendly is set
Exit codes: 0 success, 2 usage error, 3 not found, 4 auth error, 5 API error, 7 rate limited, 10 config error.
Health Check
producthunt-pp-cli doctor
Verifies configuration, credentials, and connectivity to the API.
Configuration
Config file: ~/.config/producthunt-pp-cli/config.toml
Environment variables:
Troubleshooting
Authentication errors (exit code 4)
- Run
producthunt-pp-cli doctor to check credentials
- Verify the environment variable is set:
echo $PRODUCT_HUNT_TOKEN
Not found errors (exit code 3)
- Check the resource ID is correct
- Run the
list command to see available items
API-specific
invalid_oauth_token error from any GraphQL command — Run producthunt doctor — if the token is missing run producthunt auth onboard; if the token is present but rejected, regenerate it at https://www.producthunt.com/v2/oauth/applications and producthunt auth set-token <new>- Maker names and commenter usernames show as
[REDACTED] — Product Hunt globally redacts Post.makers, Post.comments[].user, user() non-self lookups, and Collection.user for both auth modes — Post.user (the poster) and viewer (yourself) are unredacted; pass --select to suppress the [REDACTED] columns
whoami returns null — You are using OAuth client_credentials; the public scope has no user context — switch to a developer token (producthunt auth onboard will do this) to use whoamiRATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED after a heavy command — PH's per-token complexity budget is 6,250 points / 15 min — producthunt whoami reports the remaining budget and reset epoch; rerun after the reset or split the work across windows- RSS feed entries are missing votes / comments / makers — Product Hunt's Atom feed is intentionally minimal —
producthunt auth onboard unlocks the GraphQL tier where those fields exist
Sources & Inspiration
This CLI was built by studying these projects and resources:
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