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arclanguage
anarki
Arc2008–2025
arclanguage / anarki

anarki

Community-managed fork of the Arc dialect of Lisp; for commit privileges submit a pull request.

116Distinct people
176Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
1.2KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Community-managed fork of the Arc dialect of Lisp; for commit privileges submit a pull request.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

> Anyhow, sorry to derail the black bar discussion. IMNHO Not at all! Just like I love the fact that someone that didn't realize the meaning of the bar, simply asked (and so…

e12e used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year176 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2008-04-15 03:02:27 UTC to 2025-11-25 00:11:41 UTC.

05101520252008-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2009-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments20082009-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 0 submissions, 8 comments2010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 23 mentions; 1 submissions, 22 comments2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 24 mentions; 2 submissions, 22 comments2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 0 submissions, 10 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 0 submissions, 9 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 0 submissions, 8 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 16 mentions; 1 submissions, 15 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 13 mentions; 0 submissions, 13 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 2 submissions, 10 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 0 submissions, 8 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 0 submissions, 9 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 0 submissions, 9 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20082008-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2009-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
20092009-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC808
20102010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC23122
20112011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC24222
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC10010
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC909
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC808
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC16115
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC13013
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC12210
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC808
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC909
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC909
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 12, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Anarki A publicly modifiable 'wiki-like' fork of Arc Lisp The intention is to be extremely permissive in accepting patches. For commit privileges, just submit your first pull request or ask on Arc Language Forum. Getting started Installation First install Racket (v7.7 or later), then in a terminal, run: $ raco pkg install sha $ git clone http://github.com/arclanguage/anarki $ cd anarki You can start the interactive repl with: $ ./arc.sh Or start news (and the repl) with: $ cd apps/news $ ./run-news Tutorial If you're new to Arc, or Lisp in general, a good starting point is the Tutorial. Documentation and help If you run into trouble, check Arc Language Forum Arc Language Wiki Arc Language Documentation Arc's built-in help system by typing (help) at the repl News Site Anarki comes bundled with News, a Hacker News style app. Admins To run News, first pick your (the admin's) username, $ cd anarki/apps/news $ mkdir www $ echo __username__ > www/admins You can have multiple admins. Add them all to www/admins, separated by whitespace. Starting the server Warning: If you are already running a News site, migrating to this fork might mess up your site's data. Come talk to us first, and be sure to make a backup before the migration. Now bring up the server, $ ./run-news There'll be a pause while the server loads up, with some messages, then you'll see the arc> prompt. Go to http://localhost:8080. Click on login, and create the account for your username. You should now be logged in as an admin. (Don't worry about user break or error writing messages.) Customization To customize News, change the variables at the top of apps/news/news.arc. To change the port your server runs at, modify apps/news/run-news.arc. Any interactive changes to the prompt will be reflected immediately in the server, without needing to restart it. Hence if you make any changes to apps/news/news.arc, you can load them, by typing (load "apps/news/news.arc") in the repl. If you stop the server or it dies for some reason, previously entered commands are available in the command history (at least if you have Readline installed). HTTPS You may want to serve News securely over HTTPS. An example configuration for running Nginx with SSL as a reverse proxy for News can be found in anarki/extras/news.nginx.conf. Resetting passwords For password reset mails to be sent out, your must set up an email account to send these from, $ echo "someone@example.com" > www/app-email ; email $ echo "smtp.example.com" >> www/app-email ; smtp server $ echo "someone@example.com" >> www/app-email ; user $ echo "1234" >> www/app-email ; password Development Tests Anarki has thorough automated tests. # start in the anarki directory $ ./arc.sh arc> (load "tests.arc") Anarki is explicitly not constrained to maintain compatibility with upstream releases, and compatibility status may swing wildly from commit to commit depending on who takes an interest. To see a list of what's different, type (incompatibilities) at the repl. If you make an incompatible change, please update this list. Anybody is welcome to make changes to Anarki, but please make sure the tests continue to pass. Since we rely on the unit-test.arc test harness, please also run its tests before committing any changes: $ ./arc.sh (require 'lib/unit-test.arc/unit-test.arc) (load "unit-test.arc/tests.arc") (test-and-error-on-failure) Racket interop Racket expressions can be evaluated with the ($ ...) syntax. For instance, (($ crypto-random-bytes) 16) obtains the crypto-random-bytes function from Racket and makes a call to it. If you write lots of Racket code and you just want to use Anarki for part of a bigger project, you can raco pkg install anarki and use Anarki to write Racket modules: #lang anarki (:provide function-for-use-in-racket) (= racket-import ($.dynamic-require ...)) (load "relative/path.arc") (def utility-for-use-in-racket (x) (* x (racket-import x)) Scope Note that Anarki does not have private module scopes; the (:provide ...) section is just there to make it easy to require an Anarki-based library from Racket. Keyword arguments Anarki has some issues passing keyword arguments to Racket functions, but Racket's keyword-apply can be used for that.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

176 sources
Because it's owned by billion dollar Silicon Valley startup incubator and has a ton of "business logic" for YC baked into it, and it isn't worth anyone's time to bother open sourcing it. Dang has mentioned wanting to do it but it isn't a priority. You can get the original version of Arc Lisp and the forum it's based on here[0], which only a select few people update, rarely, and they don't take PRs as far as I'm aware. And there is a FOSS fork here[1], which might as well be dead, but as far as what's actually running under HN's hood, good luck getting to it if you aren't a YC employee. [0]http://arclanguage.org/ [1]https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki
In Ask HN: Why isn't HN libre/FOSS?
>Where is the HN source code right now? Free and Open? Yes and no. HN itself is running a proprietary fork of Arc Lisp, which you can find here[0]. The Arc maintainters don't take public PRs or feature requests, and HN itself has numerous changes to the codebase which aren't public for business reasons. There is a public fork of Arc called Anarki[1] which has no direct connection to HN or Arc Lisp, and for which the community and development is... well... anarchic. And given the general culture here around minimalism and stasis (not wanting to introduce new features for fear of entropy that would negatively affect the signal to noise ratio and push the site towards Eternal September) chances are any large, publicly visible changes to the codebase aren't going to happen. People here riot if they change the stylesheets just a bit too much.
Read the rest
Heaven help us if something imports content from beyond the AT field that Hacker News keeps between itself and the unwashed masses. But dang's email is at the bottom of the page if you want to ask him. Honestly, as with most such questions regarding HN, the preferred answer is probably to just write a third party client that uses the HN API and let HN stay what it is. [0]http://arclanguage.org/ [1]https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki
In Ask HN: What would it take for HN to become ActivityPub compatible?
The original version was open sourced (Perl artistic License) http://arclanguage.org/ There is an active fork in https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki but it's totally independent and the current conde in HN can be (very) different. My guess is that it's very difficult to keep all the details of the secret sauce hidden. They change the details very often. For example the front page is ordered by points/time^1.6, but the 1.6 changes from time to time without notice (I think it was 1.8 for some time, perhaps it's 1.8 or something else now. Some people have analyzed the front page and got compatible results, but I don't remember the exponent they found and I'm too lazy to try).
In Ask HN: Dang, could the login page get a title?
It was published in the public version of 2009 https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/blob/9f2e1dd53b5b66bb4... Look for "contro-factor" (i.e. controversial-factor). This is old code, and the mods make tweaks here and there without warning, so the details may have changed. (I'm not sure if gravity changed from 1.8 to 1.6 (???).) I didn't test it personally, but it feels like HN is using something very similar. And there are a few black box analysis of the sorting of the front page that got similar results. Also, minimaxir is the kind of person that is probably running an script to use the HN API to verify the claims.
In Show HN: Hacker News Without News

Showing the 15 most recent of 176 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.

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