<p>In a custom module for drupal 4.7 I hacked together a node object and passed it to node_save($node) to create nodes.  This hack appears to no longer work in drupal 6.  While I'm sure this hack could be fixed I'm curious if there is a standard solution to create nodes without a form.  In this case the data is pulled in from a custom feed on another website.</p>

I don't know of a standard API for creating a node pragmatically. But this is what I've gleaned from building a module that does what you're trying to do.
Make sure the important fields are set: uid, name, type, language, title, body, filter (see
```
node_add()
```
and
```
node_form()
```
)
Pass the node through
```
node_object_prepare()
```
so other modules can add to the $node object.