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ph

Introduction

What ph is and how it is put together.

A command line for Product Hunt.

ph is a single binary. It reads Product Hunt over plain HTTPS, shapes the responses into clean records, and gets out of your way.

Two planes, one record

Product Hunt is readable two ways, and ph reads both behind one record shape:

  • The web plane reads www.producthunt.com. It is the default and needs no account. Every page is fronted by Cloudflare, so the one anonymous surface it reads is the Atom feed at /feed: the recent launches. A walled page returns exit 4.
  • The API plane reads api.producthunt.com over GraphQL. It is reliable from anywhere and turns on when PRODUCTHUNT_TOKEN, or PRODUCTHUNT_CLIENT_ID and PRODUCTHUNT_CLIENT_SECRET, are set in the environment. The credentials are free from Product Hunt and are read from the environment only, never a flag.

Both planes carry the same numeric post id and the same fields, so a feed read and an API read address the same record. --plane web|api|auto chooses; the default auto uses the API when credentials are set and the web otherwise.

How it is built

  • A library package (producthunt) holds the HTTP client and the typed data models. It paces requests, sets an honest User-Agent, retries the transient failures any public site throws under load, and mints an access token from the client credentials when it needs one.
  • A domain (producthunt/domain.go) declares each operation once on the any-cli/kit framework. That single declaration becomes a CLI command, an HTTP route, an MCP tool, and a resource-URI dereference.
  • A thin cmd/ph hands the assembled app to kit.Run, which builds the command tree and the serve and mcp surfaces.

One operation, four surfaces

Because an operation is surface-neutral, the same post you run on the command line is also a route and a tool:

ph post brainflow-2                      # the command
ph serve --addr :7777                    # GET /v1/post/brainflow-2
ph mcp                                   # the post tool, over stdio
ant get producthunt://post/1173164       # the URI dereference (via a host)

Scope

ph is a read-only client over data Product Hunt already serves publicly. It does not log in, store credentials, or solve anti-bot challenges, and it is honest about a walled surface rather than working around it. Every record keeps its url so a downstream display can link back to the source. That narrow scope keeps it a single small binary with no database, no daemon, and no setup.

Next: install it, then take the quick start.

3 min read