Profiling Hacker News users based on their comments

Simon Willison describes a technique of feeding a user's last 1,000 Hacker News comments (retrieved via the Algolia API) into an LLM like Claude Opus 4.6 with the prompt 'profile this user.' He demonstrates the results using his own profile, which accurately captures his identity as Django co-creator, Datasette developer, and AI-assisted coding advocate. The generated profile details his working style, technical interests, and public positions with surprising depth and accuracy.