Understanding Story Feeds

The Hacker News MCP server provides access to multiple curated story feeds that reflect different aspects of community activity. Each feed serves a distinct purpose and helps you find the content most relevant to your needs.

Top Stories represent the most popular submissions currently on Hacker News. These stories have accumulated significant upvotes from the community and reflect what users find most valuable or interesting at this moment. Top stories change throughout the day as new submissions gain traction and older ones decline.

New Stories show the latest submissions as they arrive on the platform. This feed gives you a real-time view of what's being shared, before the community has voted content up or down. It's ideal for discovering emerging topics or monitoring submissions as they happen.

Best Stories highlight content that has demonstrated sustained value and quality. This feed uses Hacker News' algorithm to identify stories that have performed well over time, providing a slightly more curated view than the raw top stories feed.

Retrieving Story Feeds

To access any of these feeds, simply ask your AI assistant using natural language. You don't need to memorize commands or syntax—the server understands conversational requests.

For example:

• "Show me the top stories on Hacker News"
• "What are the latest new submissions?"
• "Get the best stories from Hacker News"

The server returns structured information about each story, including the title, URL, author, score (upvotes), submission time, and number of comments. This data gives you a complete picture of each submission without needing to visit the website.

Working with Story Data

Once you retrieve a story feed, you can explore individual stories in greater depth. Each story has a unique identifier that allows you to access its full comment thread, track score changes over time, or investigate the submitter's profile.

You can also filter or analyze story data based on your specific needs. For instance, you might ask to see only stories with more than 100 comments, identify submissions about a particular technology, or find stories from a specific time period.

Practical Applications

Story feeds enable various workflows. Monitor breaking technology news by checking new stories regularly. Research trending topics by analyzing what reaches the top stories feed. Discover quality content by exploring best stories in your areas of interest. The flexibility of natural language queries means you can adapt these feeds to countless specific scenarios without technical complexity.