Understanding User Profiles

The Hacker News MCP Server provides comprehensive access to user profile data, allowing you to retrieve detailed information about community members. Each profile contains valuable data including the user's karma score, account creation date, biographical information (if provided), and submission history. This feature is essential for identifying thought leaders, researching contributors in specific technical domains, or understanding the context behind comments and submissions.

To retrieve a user profile, simply ask your AI assistant about a specific Hacker News user by their username. The server will return structured data about that user's account, including their public profile information and activity metrics.

Accessing Activity History

User activity history encompasses all public contributions a member has made to Hacker News, including both story submissions and comments. This historical data provides insight into a user's areas of expertise, engagement patterns, and contribution history within the community.

When you request a user's activity, the server retrieves their submission and comment history, presenting it in an organized format. Each item includes metadata such as timestamps, scores, and content, making it easy to trace a user's participation over time. This is particularly useful when you want to understand someone's technical background, review their past contributions on specific topics, or assess their influence within the community.

Practical Applications

Expert Identification: Locate users with deep knowledge in particular technology areas by examining their comment and submission history. This helps when seeking authoritative perspectives on technical subjects.

Engagement Tracking: Monitor how specific users interact with the community, which topics they engage with most frequently, and how their contributions are received by others.

Context Building: When reading comments or submissions, access the author's profile to understand their background and previous contributions, adding valuable context to their statements.

Research and Analysis: Conduct studies on community dynamics, user behavior patterns, or the evolution of discussions around specific technologies by analyzing multiple user profiles and their activity timelines.

Making Requests

Retrieving profile and activity data is straightforward through natural language interaction with your AI assistant. Simply ask questions like "Show me the profile for username X" or "What has this user submitted recently?" The server handles the API communication and returns formatted results that are easy to read and analyze, eliminating the need for manual data collection or custom scripting.