Overview

When working with the Hacker News MCP Server, you'll often need to retrieve specific items rather than browsing general feeds. Every story, comment, and poll on Hacker News has a unique numeric identifier that allows you to access it directly. This guide explains how to query these specific items efficiently.

Understanding Item Identifiers

Hacker News assigns a sequential numeric ID to every item posted on the platform. These identifiers appear in URLs when you browse the site—for example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345678 refers to item 12345678. You can use these same IDs to retrieve specific content through the MCP server, whether it's a story, comment, poll, or job posting.

Requesting Specific Items

To retrieve a specific item, simply ask your AI assistant for content using the item's ID. You can phrase your request naturally:

• "Get Hacker News item 12345678"
• "Show me details for HN story 12345678"
• "Retrieve the comment with ID 12345678"

The server will return comprehensive information about that item, including its type, title (if applicable), text content, author, timestamp, score, and any associated URLs or metadata.

What You'll Receive

The response includes all available data for the requested item:

• Type: Whether it's a story, comment, poll, job posting, or poll option
• Author: The username of the person who submitted it
• Time: When the item was posted (as a Unix timestamp)
• Text: The content body for comments or self-posts
• URL: External links for stories that point to articles
• Score: Current point value from community voting
• Descendants: Total number of comments in the discussion tree
• Kids: IDs of direct children (replies or comments)

Practical Applications

Querying specific items is valuable when you've identified content of interest and need detailed information. For example:

Following discussions: If you're tracking a particular story, retrieve it by ID periodically to see updated scores and comment counts.

Deep-diving into threads: Access a specific comment to explore its replies and understand nuanced discussions within larger conversations.

Research and reference: When you encounter a Hacker News link elsewhere, quickly pull the full context and discussion using its ID.

Building context: Retrieve parent items referenced in comments to understand the full conversation flow.

Working with Retrieved Data

Once you have item data, you can explore related content using the returned IDs. Comments include their parent item's ID and a list of child comment IDs, allowing you to navigate entire discussion trees systematically. This makes it possible to reconstruct conversations, analyze discussion patterns, or follow specific sub-threads within larger posts.

By leveraging direct item queries, you gain precise control over what Hacker News content you access, making your interactions with the platform more targeted and efficient.