Harken monitors keywords, brands, or products across online sources and organizes mentions, sentiment, and themes in a local dashboard. Sources include Hacker News, Reddit, Mastodon, Bluesky, Stack Overflow, RSS, X, and YouTube. A built-in local lexicon analyzer scores sentiment, while optional LLM analysis can label themes using Anthropic, OpenAI, or locally run Ollama. The tool includes a web dashboard and terminal CLI, stores its database in SQLite, and says it sends no Harken telemetry. Alerts for negative mentions and configured volume or sentiment thresholds can go to Slack, generic webhooks, or SMTP email. Optional account mode provides viewer, operator, and admin roles. Tracking sends search terms to selected source APIs; choosing Anthropic or OpenAI for theme labels sends a small sample of mention text to that provider. Hacker News and Bluesky work without credentials, while other sources may need credentials, configured feeds, or tokens. Harken is open-source MIT software, free to self-host with no per-seat pricing, and includes API access. Its quickstart requires Python 3.10 or later; Docker Compose instructions are included.
Who it is for
Harken may suit indie founders, open-source maintainers, and privacy-conscious teams that want to monitor online mentions. It is intended for people comfortable running self-hosted software.
What is good
- Includes sentiment scoring and theme grouping.
- Stores its database locally in SQLite.
- Offers Slack, webhook, and email alerts.
- Hacker News and Bluesky work without credentials.
- Provides both a web dashboard and terminal CLI.
What to know first
- Historical data is limited.
- Some sources require credentials, feeds, or tokens.
- Tracking sends search terms to selected source APIs.
- Optional Anthropic or OpenAI labeling sends mention samples.
Verdict
Harken combines source monitoring, sentiment, themes, and alerts in a self-hosted package. Teams should consider its limited historical data and the information sent to selected source APIs or optional LLM providers.
Harken plans and pricing
All plansCompared on social media listening software
- Free plan
- Yes
- Source coverage
- Hacker News, Reddit, Mastodon, Bluesky, Stack Overflow, RSS/Atom, X, YouTube
- Sentiment analysis
- Yes
- Historical data
- limited
- API access
- Yes
