Overview

The Hacker News MCP Server provides straightforward access to story feeds, allowing you to retrieve and monitor content from one of technology's most influential communities. This guide explains how to access top stories and various story feeds through the server.

Understanding Story Feeds

Hacker News organizes content into several distinct feeds, each serving a different purpose. The top stories feed displays posts that have gained significant community traction through upvotes and engagement. The new stories feed shows the latest submissions as they arrive, while the best stories feed highlights content that has demonstrated sustained value over time.

Each story includes essential metadata such as the title, URL, author, score, submission time, and number of comments. This structured data makes it easy to analyze trends, discover valuable content, or monitor specific topics.

Retrieving Top Stories

To access top stories, simply ask your AI assistant to retrieve them. For example, you might say "Show me the current top stories on Hacker News" or "What are the trending posts right now?" The server will return a list of stories currently on the front page, ordered by their prominence in the community.

Top stories represent content that has risen through Hacker News's ranking algorithm, combining factors like upvotes, time since submission, and engagement velocity. This feed is ideal for understanding what the tech community considers important at any given moment.

Accessing Other Story Feeds

Beyond top stories, you can request new or best stories depending on your needs. New stories are useful for catching breaking news or discovering content before it gains widespread attention. Simply ask for "new stories" or "latest submissions" to access this feed.

Best stories provide a curated view of content that has proven valuable over time. Request this feed when you want to explore high-quality discussions and articles that have stood the test of community scrutiny.

Filtering and Analysis

Once you've retrieved stories, you can ask follow-up questions to analyze the data. Request stories about specific topics, ask for summaries of highly-rated submissions, or explore which domains are most frequently shared. The server's integration with AI assistants enables natural language queries that would be cumbersome to execute manually.

Practical Applications

Use story retrieval to monitor emerging trends, discover technical articles vetted by the community, or track discussions about specific technologies or companies. The real-time nature of the data ensures you're always working with current information, making the server valuable for staying informed about technology discourse.