Thanks! Nice, you found the alltrust.json file ha. Yes, a bg job running on an rpi leverages HN APIs and builds the alltrust file by the minute, for all "active" accounts. Technically fetching that data is all you'd need to make your own script/plugin.

It's centralized for a few reasons though, first being that client-side API requests would be discourteous to the APIs (flood/ddos), and a whole new level of error handling would be required. Shared IPs, like those in a tech company building, would easily and quickly reach the API limits. So that's the reasoning, if you're curious.