MRD Thread Search (Hackernews & Reddit)

Finds HN & Reddit submissions for the current URL.

# MRD Thread Search **MRD Thread Search** queries Hacker News and Reddit APIs to find where the current web page is being discussed, displays match counts directly on the toolbar badge, and tracks discussion threads in the background. ## Key Features - **Instant Discussion Search:** Queries Hacker News (Algolia) and Reddit (Info API) for submissions referencing the active tab URL. - **Dynamic Toolbar Badge:** Displays discussion or total comment counts on the toolbar icon, color-coded by dominant discussion platform (orange for HN, blue for Reddit). - **Background Thread Tracking:** Track specific discussions with configurable periodic checks (default 1 hour) to flag new submissions and comment spikes. - **Multi-Level Threshold Filtering:** Filter results by minimum comment counts and sort by score, recency, or discussion depth. - **Zero Page Interference:** The content script performs passive URL detection only without scraping or injecting DOM nodes. - **Cloud-Synced Watchlist:** Tracked threads and user exclusion patterns sync seamlessly across your devices. ## Feature Guide ### What it does While you're on any web page, this extension finds the places where that page is being discussed on Hacker News (a technology news forum) and Reddit (a community discussion site). Click the extension's toolbar icon and a panel opens (the popup) listing every discussion it found: how many comments each has, the title as a link, and how long ago it was posted. You can also tell it to keep watching a page and flag new comments for you. A small counter on the toolbar icon itself (the badge) previews the findings before you even click. This is read-only discovery — nothing is posted or voted. On browser-internal pages (like `chrome://` pages or files), the popup simply says "This page is not searchable." ### Searching the page you're on Open the popup and click the magnifying glass. Results appear as rows: comment count on the left, linked title, and post age. Click a title to open the discussion in a new tab. If the page was searched recently, the list is served from the cache (a saved copy of the last search, kept about an hour by default), so it appears instantly; otherwise a fresh search runs. Edge case: searching while on a Hacker News discussion page comes back empty, because the page's address has its ID stripped before searching [L-THREADSEARCH-10]. If the network request fails, the popup shows "No submissions with ≥0 comments." instead of an error [L-THREADSEARCH-09]. ### Sorting and filtering Rows sort by most comments (speech-bubble button) or by newest (hourglass button). The numbered buttons (0, 5, 25, 50, 100) hide discussions with fewer comments than the chosen number; the active number stays highlighted. While the settings panel is open, these buttons turn into editable fields so you can define your own thresholds, and extra pairs appear if you have added more than five. The same minimum also filters the list inside each tracked page. The numbers count comments per discussion — not upvotes or views. ### The toolbar badge The badge is the small colored counter overlaid on the extension's toolbar icon. By default it shows the total comment count across all discussions found for the page you're on (shortened, like 1.2k). Uncheck "Show comments in badge" and it switches to how many discussions pass your minimum-comment filter; if none pass, it shows an empty colored chip. The color hints at the source: orange leans Hacker News, blue leans Reddit, and the default blue means a mix. The badge never appears on Hacker News or Reddit itself, or on sites you've disabled. If auto-search is off and the page isn't cached, a badge left over from the previous page can linger [L-THREADSEARCH-12]. ### Tracking a page Click the plus-chat icon to track the page you're on — it joins a watch list of up to 20 pages. Open the panel behind the dashed-chat icon to see them. Each entry lists its discussions with a read/unread marker: a filled marker means something changed since you last looked — "N" prefixes a brand-new discussion, and "+5" means five new comments on a known one. Click the marker to mark it read, which resets those "+new" counts to zero. The X removes a page; it's actually forgotten after 24 hours, though the panel text says 30 days [L-THREADSEARCH-05]. The days-left box is display only — reaching 0 stops nothing [L-THREADSEARCH-06]. A freshly tracked page with nothing found yet says "No submissions found for this URL yet." ### Automatic re-checks Tracked pages are re-checked on a timer — hourly by default, adjustable down to every 15 minutes in the debug tools. Each re-check searches the page's saved address, updates comment counts, and flags new discussions; a discussion's count never drops, even if comments are deleted. You can force a re-check by opening the tracking panel and clicking the search icon, which turns into a refresh there. One quirk: re-checks use the stored, trimmed address, so pages tracked on Hacker News itself never pick up new comments — their stored address lost the thread's ID [L-THREADSEARCH-10]. ### Across your devices Tracked pages and all settings are kept in Chrome's built-in sync storage, which follows the Google account signed into the browser — a page tracked on one computer shows up on another, and removing it removes it everywhere (the removal marker survives about a day on other devices before cleanup, which is how the removal spreads). The search-results cache stays local to each device. If Chrome's sync storage is full or throttled, the extension keeps working from a local mirror, so nothing is lost mid-sync. ### Settings, controls, and the debug tools The gear icon opens settings: Autosearch (search each page automatically as it loads — this is what feeds the badge), Disable for this site (and, on subdomains, for the whole domain), Truncate long titles, and Show comments in badge. Clicking the header icon cycles its color theme. The debug area (shift+click the header) holds cache hours (minimum 0.5) and re-check hours (minimum 0.25), plus three red buttons: Reset Settings (keeps your tracked pages), Clear Cache, and Clear Tracking (empties all saved discussions and unread flags, after a confirmation).