CLI

ph <command> [arguments] [flags]

Run ph <command> --help for the full flag list on any command.

Read commands

Command	What it does
posts	List the post stream (the keyless Atom feed for the newest case, the API when keyed or filtered)
post <ref>	Show one post in full (API by id or slug, the feed when keyless and recent)
comments <ref>	List a post's comment thread (API plane)
topics	List topics (API plane; needs credentials)
topic <ref>	Show one topic with its top posts (API plane)
collections	List collections (API plane; needs credentials)
collection <ref>	Show one collection with its posts (API plane)
user <ref>	Show one user with the posts they made (API plane)

A <ref> is a numeric post id, a page slug, an @username (for user), or a full Product Hunt URL.

Crawl commands

Command	What it does
feed	Read the public Atom feed of recent posts (the keyless web seed)

Ref commands (offline)

Command	What it does
ref id <ref>	Resolve a URL, path, Atom id, @username, slug, or bare id to its canonical (kind, id)
ref url <kind> <id>	Build the addressable URL for a (kind, id)

These need no network and answer instantly.

Other commands

Command	What it does
serve [--addr]	Serve the operations over HTTP as NDJSON
mcp	Run as an MCP server over stdio
version	Print the version and exit

Plane and filter flags

Flag	Meaning
--plane	Which plane to read: web, api, or auto (default auto)
--order	List order: posts ranking|newest|votes|featured, topics followers|newest, collections followers|newest|featured
--topic	Filter posts to a topic slug (API plane)
--featured	Restrict to featured posts or collections (API plane)
--after	Posts on or after this ISO date (API plane)
--before	Posts on or before this ISO date (API plane)

The API credentials are read from PRODUCTHUNT_TOKEN, or PRODUCTHUNT_CLIENT_ID and PRODUCTHUNT_CLIENT_SECRET, in the environment, never a flag. The keyless feed serves only the newest, unfiltered post list; any --order other than newest, or any --topic, --featured, --after, or --before, needs the API plane. See configuration.

Global flags

These are shared by every operation, so they work the same on every command.

Flag	Meaning
-o, --output	Output format: auto, table, markdown, json, jsonl, csv, tsv, url, raw
--fields	Comma-separated columns to keep
--template	Go text/template applied per record
--no-header	Omit the header row in table and csv
-n, --limit	Stop after N records (0 means no limit)
--user-agent	User-Agent sent with each request
--rate	Minimum delay between requests (default 2s)
--retries	Retry attempts on rate limit or 5xx (default 3)
--timeout	Per-request timeout (default 30s)
--cache-ttl	How long a cached response stays fresh (default 6h)
--no-cache	Bypass on-disk caches
--refresh	Fetch fresh copies and rewrite the cache, ignoring any hit
--data-dir	Override the data directory
--db	Tee every record into a SQLite store (a file path, e.g. out.db)
-v, --verbose	Increase verbosity (repeatable)
-q, --quiet	Suppress progress output
--color	auto, always, or never

See output formats for what -o, --fields, and --template produce, and configuration for environment variables and defaults.