> I found myself checking the HN frontpage way too often, only to make a visual diff in my brain to skim through the articles I already read.

Check out hckrnews[0]. It gives you a clean chronological list of entries that you can filter down to top 10, 50%, frontpage and all.

It also marks the point where you last visited, and dims the entries that you clicked.

[0]: https://hckrnews.com