Ask HN: How to do auth with the HN API?

For a long time I am planning to build an extended HN client for the web. I even started this project at least twice :)

There is however one problem I face. The HN API doesn't offer any auth mechanism besides basic auth. So if you as a user wanted to link your account to my web service you would have to save your login and password on my site. My guess is that most people are not interested in this solution, and for good reason.

The only workaround I see is having the user create another account just for the web service which is also not optimal for several reasons.

Do you know any workaround for that?

Thanks!