Lobsters

May 6, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

Mode: ๐ŸŒ Public ยท Domain: lobste.rs

Commands

CommandDescription
opencli lobsters hotHottest stories
opencli lobsters newestLatest stories
opencli lobsters activeMost active discussions
opencli lobsters tag <tag>Stories by tag
opencli lobsters domain <domain>Stories submitted from a specific source domain
opencli lobsters read <short_id>Read a story and its comment tree

Usage Examples

# Quick start
opencli lobsters hot --limit 10

# Filter by tag
opencli lobsters tag rust --limit 5

# Stories from a specific source domain
opencli lobsters domain github.com --limit 10
opencli lobsters domain arxiv.org --limit 5

# Read a specific story (use the short_id surfaced as `id` in any listing)
opencli lobsters read 6cmh6h --limit 25 --depth 2

# JSON output
opencli lobsters hot -f json

Output Columns

CommandColumns
hot / newest / active / tagrank, id, title, score, author, comments, created_at, tags, url
domainrank, id, title, score, author, comments, created_at, tags, submission_url, comments_url
readtype, author, score, text (POST + L0/L1/โ€ฆ comments, with [+N more replies] stubs)

id is the lobste.rs short_id โ€” pipe it into read to drill into the discussion.

domain returns both submission_url (the underlying article URL on the source site) and comments_url (the lobste.rs discussion page). The legacy listing commands collapse these into a single url (= comments_url).

Prerequisites

None โ€” all commands use the public JSON API, no browser or login required.