Understanding User Profiles

User profiles on Hacker News contain valuable information about community members, including their submission history, comments, karma score, and biographical details. The Hackernews MCP server makes it easy to access this information through simple natural language requests to your AI assistant.

To look up a user profile, simply ask your assistant about a specific Hacker News user by their username. For example, you might say "Show me the profile for [username]" or "What's the karma score for [username]?" The server will retrieve the user's public profile information and present it in an easy-to-read format.

What Profile Information You Can Access

When you look up a user profile, you'll typically receive several key pieces of information:

• Username and account age: When the user joined Hacker News
• Karma score: A measure of community recognition based on upvotes received
• About section: Biographical information the user has chosen to share
• Submission count: The number of stories and links they've posted

This information helps you understand a user's level of engagement and standing within the community.

Viewing User Activity History

Beyond basic profile information, you can explore a user's activity history to see their contributions to the platform. Request to see a user's recent submissions by asking something like "What has [username] posted recently?" or "Show me [username]'s latest comments."

The server provides access to both submission history (stories and links the user has posted) and comment history (their participation in discussions). This is particularly useful for:

• Following thought leaders: Track contributions from experts in specific technical domains
• Research purposes: Understand a user's areas of expertise and interests
• Community analysis: Study engagement patterns and contribution quality

Practical Applications

User profile lookups serve several practical purposes. You can identify subject matter experts by examining users who frequently comment on specific topics with high-karma contributions. You can also track the activity of notable figures in the tech community to stay informed about their current interests and perspectives.

When conducting research on particular technologies or companies, examining the profiles of users who regularly discuss those topics can lead you to additional relevant discussions and insights you might have missed.

The Hackernews MCP server makes all of this accessible through conversational requests, eliminating the need to manually browse user profiles on the website or write custom scripts to gather this information.