circumflex

clx [flags]
clx [command] [arguments]

circumflex (binary name clx) is a terminal-based Hacker News client built with the Bubble Tea TUI framework. It lets you browse stories, read comment threads with syntax-aware formatting, and view linked articles in Reader Mode without leaving the terminal.
Comments are pretty-printed and piped to less with syntax highlighting for code snippets, @mentions, variables, and URLs. Rainbow-colored indentation bars distinguish nesting levels. The tool tracks read history, highlights new comments since last visit, and supports saving favorites as pretty-printed JSON at ~/.config/circumflex/favorites.json.

-a, --auto-expand

Auto-expand all replies in comment threads.

Set visible categories (default: "top,best,ask,show").

Set comment width in characters (default: 70).

Disable emoji conversion in output.

Disable marking submissions as read.

Hide indentation guide bars in comments.

Enable Nerd Fonts icons.

Disable syntax highlighting in comments.

Disable syntax highlighting in headlines.

Display version number.

add id

Add a submission to favorites by its Hacker News ID.

Jump directly to the comment section of a submission.

Read the linked article in Reader Mode.

Open any URL in Reader Mode.

Delete browsing history.

Requires a modern version of less as its pager. Depends on Algolia's Hacker News Search API and cheeaun's unofficial HN API; functionality is impacted if either is down. Uses invisible Unicode characters for custom keybindings within less, which could cause issues with certain terminal configurations. The CLX_BROWSER environment variable can override the default browser.

circumflex was created by bensadeh and publicly announced on Hacker News in October 2022. Written in Go using the Bubble Tea TUI framework. The latest version is 3.9 (January 2025), licensed under AGPL-3.0, with approximately 1,900 GitHub stars.

less(1), newsboat(1), w3m(1), lynx(1)