Overview

The Hacker News MCP Server offers multiple ways to access different story feeds, allowing you to stay updated on what's trending, new, and valuable in the tech community. This guide walks you through retrieving top stories and exploring various story feeds available through the server.

Understanding Story Feeds

Hacker News organizes content into several distinct feeds, each serving a different purpose:

• Top Stories: The most popular posts currently on the front page, ranked by community votes and recency
• New Stories: The latest submissions as they arrive, regardless of voting status
• Best Stories: High-quality posts that have demonstrated lasting value and strong community engagement

Each feed provides a different lens into the Hacker News community, helping you find content that matches your specific needs.

Retrieving Top Stories

To access the current top stories on Hacker News, simply ask your AI assistant to fetch them. You might say something like "Show me the top stories on Hacker News" or "What's trending on HN right now?"

The server will return structured information about each story, including:

• Title and URL of the submission
• Author username
• Current score (upvotes)
• Number of comments
• Submission timestamp

This information gives you a complete snapshot of what the community finds most interesting at the moment.

Accessing Other Story Feeds

Beyond top stories, you can request specific feeds based on your interests:

For the latest submissions, ask for new stories to see what's just been posted to the site. This is ideal for discovering content before it becomes popular or monitoring real-time submissions.

For high-quality content, request best stories to access posts that have proven their value through sustained community engagement. This feed filters for submissions that demonstrate lasting interest rather than temporary popularity.

Working with Story Data

Once you've retrieved stories, you can dive deeper by requesting additional details about specific items. Ask about particular stories to view their complete comment threads, explore user profiles of submitters, or track how a story's score evolves over time.

The structured data returned by the server makes it easy to analyze trends, identify patterns, or simply stay informed about topics that matter to your work. Whether you're conducting research, monitoring discussions, or discovering quality content, these story feeds provide flexible access to Hacker News's wealth of information.