Overview

The Hacker News MCP Server allows you to retrieve specific items directly 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 direct access method is especially useful when you know exactly which item you need or when following up on references from previous queries.

Understanding Hacker News Item IDs

Each piece of content on Hacker News receives a sequential numeric ID when created. You'll encounter these IDs in various contexts: they appear in URLs when browsing the site (e.g., news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345678), in API responses when querying stories or comments, and when users reference specific discussions. These IDs are permanent and never change, making them reliable identifiers for retrieving content.

How to Query Items by ID

To retrieve a specific item, simply ask your AI assistant for information about a Hacker News item using its ID. You can phrase your request naturally, such as:

• "Get Hacker News item 38477259"
• "Show me details for HN item 38500123"
• "What's in Hacker News post 38456789?"

The server will fetch the item and return structured information including the item type (story, comment, poll, etc.), author, timestamp, content, score, and any relationships to other items (such as parent comments or child replies).

What Information You'll Receive

When querying an item by ID, you'll receive comprehensive details about that specific piece of content. For stories, this includes the title, URL (if external), submission text, author username, score, submission time, and the number of comments. For comments, you'll get the comment text, author, timestamp, score, the parent item it replies to, and a list of child comment IDs if there are replies.

Common Use Cases

Querying by ID is particularly valuable when you need to revisit a specific discussion you found earlier, investigate comments referenced in other threads, or track how particular stories evolve over time. Since IDs are stable, you can save them for later reference and retrieve the same content reliably. This is also useful when analyzing comment threads, as you can traverse from parent to child comments by following the ID relationships in the returned data.

Tips for Effective Querying

When working with item IDs, remember that you can query any valid ID regardless of when the content was posted. Historical discussions remain accessible indefinitely. If you need to explore a comment thread deeply, start with the story ID to understand the full context, then query specific comment IDs to dive into particular discussion branches.