# HN Lens — AI-Powered HN Perspectives

> AI-Powered HN Perspectives (iPhone/iPad app by Douglas Molineux.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/hn-lens/id6758169588 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Douglas Molineux](https://appshunter.io/developer/397682666)
- Category: News
- Price: Free
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 26.0 · 6 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2026-03-03
- Data updated: 2026-08-03
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/hn-lens/id6758169588/reviews.md

## What is HN Lens?

HN Lens unlocks smarter, faster insights from Hacker News.
Experience comment sections summarized through unique AI personas: read summaries generated through the lens of a Software Engineer, a critical Journalist, a pragmatic Hacker, a philosopher or neutral

Then, go deeper—chat directly with the chosen persona. Ask questions, challenge takes, or explore context. It’s like having an expert beside you, reading between the lines.

Features:
- Persona-Based Summaries – Understand comments through the lens of a persona
- Chat with the Persona – Ask follow-ups & dig deeper into the discussion
- Browse All Sections of Hacker News– Seamlessly access Top, New, Ask, Show, and Jobs
- Smart Bookmarks – Save articles & their AI insights in one tap
- Clean, Native iOS Experience – Fast, focused, and built for readers who think

See Hacker News differently. Download HN Lens today.


## Version history (last 5 releases)

### 1.0.21 — 2026-07-29

Deep Dive Chat Speech Synthesis (Read Aloud)

Hands-Free Audio Reading: Added built-in Text-to-Speech controls directly beneath AI assistant responses in Deep Dive Chat.
Neural Voice & Audio Ducking: Uses enhanced neural voice selection with automatic audio session ducking (.spokenAudio).
Markdown-Safe Playback: Automatically strips Markdown formatting (like **, #, and URLs) before speaking so the audio playback sounds completely natural.
Interactive Playback Controls: Play, pause, or switch playback between messages seamlessly. Audio automatically stops when navigating away from the chat screen.

Thread-Aware Comment Analysis & Deep Discussions

Nested Reply Fetching: Captures multi-level comment replies to surface substantive debates, technical counter-arguments, and dividing opinions.
Hierarchical AI Prompts: Formats comment threads as structured parent-child debates for richer, more nuanced AI comment summaries.
Dynamic Context Budgeting: Uses native Swift NaturalLanguage word guardrails to dynamically pack maximum comment context without overflowing model limits.
Depth-First Hierarchy & Indentation: Displays comment replies directly under parent comments with visual indentation and thread markers.

Overview Article & Story Detail Navigation

Unified Navigation: Tapping any story card, digest summary, or category link in the Overview feed now seamlessly opens the full Story Detail view.
State & Filter Preservation: Preserves your scroll position, active filters, and persona states when navigating back to the Overview section.

Deep Dive Chat Formatting & Typography

Strict Table Guardrails: Instructs on-device AI models to present structured information in clean bullet points rather than raw Markdown tables.
Auto-Formatting & Spacing: Automatically inserts proper spacing before inline section headers and applies enhanced line spacing to AI response bubbles for better readability.
Markdown Table Sanitizer: A post-processing fallback automatically converts residual table syntax into clean bullet lists.

### 1.0.20 — 2026-07-17

What's New in Version 1.0.20:

• Content-First AI Lenses: Summaries across Article, Comment, News Digest, and Deep Dive Chat now adapt naturally to the subject matter. 
• No More Forced Jargon: Lenses no longer force awkward coding or technical syntax onto non-technical articles like history or science. 
• Curiosity-Driven Insights: All 7 preset lenses (Software Engineer, Hacker, Founder, etc.) have been redesigned around systems thinking, tradeoffs, and key takeaways. 
• Improved Trait Sliders: Focus, Tone, Depth, and Style adjustments now work smoothly across every topic on Hacker News.

### 1.0.19 — 2026-06-17

This update brings a few highly-requested quality-of-life improvements to make skimming stories and generating your Overview digest even better!

• Expanded Story Titles: We've increased the line limit on story titles in both the main News feed and Bookmarks. Titles now display up to four lines before truncating, giving you much more context at a glance without having to tap into the article.

• Overview Feed Customization: You can now tailor exactly what goes into your AI-generated Overview digest! Head over to Settings to find the new "Overview Filters" section, where you can easily exclude "Show HN" posts, "Ask HN" posts, and Twitter/X links from your digest. (Don't worry, these stories will still appear normally in your regular News feed).

• Settings Polish: We reorganized the Settings menu to make it a bit more intuitive to navigate and manage your cache.

### 1.0.17 — 2026-04-23

Improved Deep Dive Chat with smarter follow-up answers and more relevant comment context for thread-specific questions.

Also improved comment summaries and discussion viewing with better thread ordering, clearer loading states, and overall bug fixes and polish.

### 1.0.16 — 2026-04-18

Improved Deep Dive Chat

## More apps by Douglas Molineux

- [Dreamseek](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/dreamseek/id6745529400)
- [Chronicle Compass](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/chronicle-compass/id6747997313)
- [Three Lions](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/three-lions/id6759995531)
- [UK Radio Catcher](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/uk-radio-catcher/id6785978047)

All apps by Douglas Molineux: https://appshunter.io/developer/397682666

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-03.*