Understanding Story Feeds

The Hacker News MCP Server provides access to multiple story feeds that reflect different aspects of community activity. Each feed serves a specific purpose and helps you discover content based on different criteria.

Top Stories represent submissions that have gained significant traction through community voting and engagement. These are the posts you'll typically see on the Hacker News front page—articles, projects, and discussions that the community has collectively elevated. Top stories change throughout the day as new submissions gain votes and older ones decline in ranking.

New Stories show the most recent submissions as they arrive on Hacker News. This feed gives you access to content before the community has had time to vote it up or down, making it ideal for early discovery of breaking news or emerging topics. If you want to stay ahead of trends or monitor specific subjects in real-time, the new stories feed is your starting point.

Best Stories highlight submissions that have demonstrated lasting value through sustained engagement. This feed uses Hacker News's algorithm to identify stories with strong community approval, helping you focus on particularly high-quality content.

Retrieving Stories

To access any story feed, simply ask your AI assistant for the type of content you want. Natural language requests work seamlessly with the server.

Example requests:

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

The server returns structured information for each story, including the title, URL, author, submission time, current score (number of upvotes), and the 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 receive story information, you can dive deeper into specific submissions. Each story has a unique identifier that allows you to retrieve its full comment thread, explore discussion threads, or track how the story's score and comment count evolve over time.

You can also cross-reference stories with user profiles to understand who's submitting particular types of content, or filter results based on specific criteria like topic, score threshold, or submission time.

The server's real-time access ensures you're always working with current data, making it suitable for monitoring specific topics, conducting research, or simply staying informed about technology discussions as they unfold.