Looks like it doesn't change all titles that start with "the", see e.g. these two from the current front page:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39066795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39082552

So it only changes "the man" to "a man"? (And I'm guessing also "the woman" to "a woman"?)

I'm struggling to understand the reasoning here. Can someone give me an example of a title starting with "the man" which sounds excessively clickbaity, but "a man" fixes it? I can't think of one.

Now I'm wondering what other auto-editing rules HN applies. Is there a list somewhere?