I'm not quite sure I understand why you wouldn't want to use an add-on. I can certainly see that the flip side is undesirable. Do you think it makes sense for hacker news to solve this same issue (read it later) when there are many external options to solve the issue? If your answer to this is yes, would you also support adding tweet this story buttons? What about share on Facebook, email me a copy, copy to slack, print to google print, etc. buttons? What about friending users, following them, private messaging? Should hacker news allow images in stories next? If it adds images, then perhaps advertising would be ok?

What are some of the reasons that you read hacker news beyond the particular stories? How do you find the interface? Is it uncluttered? Does it get in the way of the content at all?

In my opinion hacker news is fine as it is, though I mostly hit it via http://hckrnews.com instead of the main site.

I use the MAFF plugin for Firefox. This lets me save a page, with embedded media, to a file. Works with every page, not just selected sites.

A generic solution trumps site-specific ones, in my opinion.