Understanding Comment Threads

Comment threads on Hacker News contain some of the most valuable insights and technical discussions on the platform. The MCP server provides structured access to these conversations, allowing you to explore discussions programmatically without manual browsing.

Retrieving Comments for a Story

To access comments on a specific story, you'll need the story's unique identifier. Once you have this ID, simply request the comments associated with that item. The server will return the complete comment thread, including all nested replies and discussion branches.

You can ask your AI assistant questions like "Show me the comments on story 12345678" or "What are people saying about this submission?" The server handles the API calls and presents the comments in an organized, readable format.

Navigating Comment Trees

Hacker News comments are organized hierarchically, with replies nested under parent comments to form conversation threads. The server preserves this tree structure, making it easy to follow discussion flows and understand context.

Each comment includes several key pieces of information:

• The comment text itself
• The author's username
• Timestamp of when it was posted
• The comment's score (if available)
• References to parent and child comments

This structured data allows you to trace conversations from top-level comments down through multiple reply levels, helping you identify the most engaged discussion branches.

Finding Individual Comments

If you know a specific comment's ID, you can retrieve it directly without pulling the entire thread. This is useful when you want to reference particular insights or track how specific comments perform over time.

Analyzing Discussion Depth

Comment threads vary widely in depth and engagement. Some stories generate hundreds of comments across multiple discussion levels, while others receive minimal response. The server provides access to all comments regardless of thread depth, enabling you to:

• Identify the most active discussion branches
• Find comments with high scores indicating community agreement
• Track how discussions evolve over time
• Discover expert commentary buried deep in threads

Practical Tips

When working with comment threads, start with top-level comments to get an overview of the discussion's main themes. From there, dive into specific branches that align with your interests or research needs.

For stories with extensive discussions, consider filtering or focusing on highly-scored comments first, as these often contain the most valuable insights or widely-agreed perspectives.

Remember that comments load with their complete metadata, so you can always identify comment authors and explore their profiles if you discover particularly insightful contributors.