Overview

Every item on Hacker News—whether it's a story, comment, poll, or job posting—has a unique numeric identifier. When you need to retrieve specific content rather than browsing feeds, querying by ID gives you direct access to exactly what you're looking for. This approach is particularly useful when you have a reference to a specific discussion, want to follow up on a particular comment thread, or need to retrieve detailed information about an item you've identified elsewhere.

How Item IDs Work

Hacker News assigns sequential numeric IDs to every piece of content created on the platform. These IDs are permanent and never change, making them reliable references for retrieving content even years after publication. You'll typically encounter item IDs in URLs (like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345678), in search results, or when browsing through stories and comments programmatically.

Querying an Item

To retrieve a specific item, simply provide its numeric ID to the server. You can request this through natural language with your AI assistant by saying something like "Get Hacker News item 12345678" or "Show me the details for item ID 38471234."

The server will return comprehensive information about the requested item, including:

• Type: Whether it's a story, comment, poll, or other content type
• Author: The username of who posted it
• Content: The text or URL associated with the item
• Metadata: Score, timestamp, and parent relationships
• Children: IDs of direct replies or comments (for stories and comments)

Common Use Cases

Following Comment Threads: When exploring discussions, you'll often want to retrieve specific comments and their replies. By querying a comment's ID, you can access its full text and discover the IDs of responses, allowing you to navigate the conversation tree systematically.

Revisiting Specific Stories: If you've previously identified a valuable story, you can retrieve it again using its ID rather than searching through feeds. This is especially helpful for referencing discussions that are no longer on the front page.

Deep-Diving into Polls: Polls and their associated options each have unique IDs. Querying these lets you examine voting options and poll results in detail.

Tips for Effective Queries

When working with item IDs, remember that you can chain queries together. Start by retrieving a story to get its comment IDs, then query those comments individually to explore the discussion. This systematic approach helps you navigate complex threads efficiently without getting overwhelmed by large data structures.