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Getting Started with the Hacker News MCP Server

What is the Hacker News MCP Server?

The Hacker News MCP Server connects your AI assistant to Hacker News, one of the most influential technology discussion platforms. This integration allows you to retrieve stories, comments, and user profiles without manually browsing the website or writing custom scripts. Whether you're tracking tech trends, researching community sentiment, or discovering quality content, this server brings Hacker News data directly into your workflow.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

  • A compatible MCP client (such as Claude Desktop or another MCP-enabled application)
  • The Hacker News MCP server installed and configured
  • Basic familiarity with making requests through your AI assistant

Basic Usage

Once configured, interact with Hacker News through natural language requests to your AI assistant. The server translates your questions into API calls and returns structured data automatically.

Retrieving Stories

Ask your assistant to fetch different story feeds:

  • Top Stories: "Show me the top stories on Hacker News" returns the current front page items
  • New Stories: "What are the newest submissions?" gives you the latest posts
  • Best Stories: "Get the best stories from Hacker News" retrieves highly-valued content

Each story includes the title, URL, score, author, and submission time.

Reading Comments

Access discussion threads to see community perspectives:

  • "Show me the comments on this story" retrieves the full comment thread
  • "What are people saying about [topic]?" explores specific discussions

Comments include scores, timestamps, and threaded replies, helping you understand conversation flow and community sentiment.

Exploring User Profiles

Research contributors and thought leaders:

  • "Get information about user [username]" returns their profile, karma, and activity
  • "Show me recent submissions from [username]" tracks specific users' contributions

This is valuable for identifying domain experts or understanding user influence within the community.

Practical Applications

Stay Informed: Keep current with technology news by requesting top stories regularly. The real-time data ensures you're seeing what's trending now.

Research Topics: When investigating technologies or companies, ask for relevant stories and their comment threads to gather diverse technical perspectives.

Discover Content: Let the community's voting system surface high-quality articles, research papers, and resources you might otherwise miss.

Monitor Discussions: Track conversations about specific topics, products, or technologies by periodically checking for related submissions and their comments.

Tips for Effective Use

Start with broad queries like "What's trending on Hacker News?" to get oriented, then drill down into specific stories or users. Remember that Hacker News updates continuously, so you're always working with current data. Explore comment threads for deeper insights—the discussions often contain more value than the original submissions.

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About Metorial

Metorial provides developers with instant access to 600+ MCP servers for building AI agents that can interact with real-world tools and services. Built on MCP, Metorial simplifies agent tool integration by offering pre-configured connections to popular platforms like Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, Notion, and hundreds of other APIs. Our platform supports all major AI agent frameworks—including LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI, and LangGraph—enabling developers to add tool calling capabilities to their agents in just a few lines of code. By eliminating the need for custom integration code, Metorial helps AI developers move from prototype to production faster while maintaining security and reliability. Whether you're building autonomous research agents, customer service bots, or workflow automation tools, Metorial's MCP server library provides the integrations you need to connect your agents to the real world.

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