Overview

The Hacker News MCP Server allows you to retrieve specific items from Hacker News using their unique identifiers. Every story, comment, poll, and job posting on Hacker News has a unique numeric ID that you can use to fetch detailed information about that particular item. This is especially useful when you know exactly what content you want to access or when you're following up on specific discussions.

Understanding Item IDs

Every piece of content on Hacker News is assigned a unique numeric ID when it's created. You can find these IDs in several ways:

• In URLs: When viewing a story or comment on Hacker News, the URL contains the item ID (e.g., news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345678)
• From other queries: When you retrieve lists of top stories or user activity, the results include item IDs
• In comment threads: Each comment has its own ID that can be used to retrieve it directly

Querying Items by ID

To retrieve a specific item, simply ask your AI assistant for the Hacker News item with that ID. For example, you might say "Get Hacker News item 12345678" or "Show me the details for HN item 12345678."

The server will return comprehensive information about the item, including:

• Type: Whether it's a story, comment, poll, or job posting
• Author: The username of the person who submitted it
• Title: For stories, the headline or title
• Text: The content body for comments or text posts
• URL: For link submissions, the external URL
• Score: Current points or votes
• Timestamp: When the item was created
• Children: IDs of comments or replies

Common Use Cases

Following Discussions: When you find an interesting story, note its ID to check back later for new comments and updated scores.

Deep Analysis: Retrieve specific comments that contain valuable insights, then explore their child comments to understand the full conversation thread.

Cross-referencing: When analyzing user activity or tracking topics, use item IDs to retrieve complete context about specific submissions or comments mentioned in other queries.

Tips for Effective Querying

Keep item IDs handy when conducting research on related topics—they serve as permanent references to specific content. Remember that item IDs are sequential, so higher numbers represent more recent content. When exploring comment threads, you can drill down into specific branches by querying individual comment IDs rather than retrieving the entire tree at once.