What Story Data Tells You

When you retrieve stories from Hacker News through the MCP server, you receive much more than just headlines. Each story comes with rich metadata that helps you understand its significance, timing, and community reception. Learning to interpret this data will help you make better sense of what you're seeing and enable more sophisticated analysis.

Understanding Scores

The score represents the number of upvotes a story has received from the Hacker News community. This metric serves as a direct indicator of community interest and approval. A higher score typically means more people found the content valuable, interesting, or discussion-worthy.

Scores aren't static—they change as users continue to vote. A story with 50 points might grow to 200 as it gains traction, or plateau if interest wanes. When analyzing stories, consider that newer submissions naturally have lower scores simply because fewer people have seen them, while front-page stories accumulate votes over several hours.

Keep in mind that score alone doesn't tell the whole story. Some niche technical topics might receive modest scores but generate deep, valuable discussions. Conversely, controversial topics sometimes receive high scores while sparking heated debates rather than constructive dialogue.

Timestamps and Timing

Every story includes a timestamp indicating when it was submitted to Hacker News. This information is crucial for several reasons. First, it helps you understand how quickly a story gained its current score—rapid score growth often indicates particularly compelling or timely content. Second, timestamps let you filter stories by recency, ensuring you're looking at fresh content when that matters.

Hacker News activity follows patterns throughout the day and week. Stories submitted during peak hours face more competition but also reach larger audiences. Understanding submission timing can help you contextualize why certain stories succeed while others don't gain traction.

Other Metadata Fields

Beyond scores and timestamps, story data includes several other useful fields. The author field tells you who submitted the story, allowing you to track contributions from specific users or identify power users who frequently surface valuable content. The URL points to the actual article or resource being discussed, while the title provides the submission headline.

Many stories also include a comment count, showing how much discussion they've generated. Sometimes a story with a moderate score but high comment count indicates controversy or complex topics that inspire debate rather than simple agreement.

Putting It All Together

By combining these data points, you can quickly assess story significance, identify trending topics before they peak, and understand community sentiment toward different subjects. This metadata transforms raw story lists into actionable intelligence about what matters in the tech community right now.