Understanding Comment Threads

Hacker News comment threads contain some of the most valuable discussions in the tech community. The MCP server provides straightforward access to these conversations, allowing you to explore them through natural language queries rather than manual browsing.

Accessing Individual Comments

To retrieve a specific comment, you'll need its unique identifier. Each comment on Hacker News has a numeric ID that you can reference directly. Simply ask your AI assistant to fetch a comment by its ID, and the server will return the complete comment data, including the author, text content, timestamp, score, and references to parent items or child comments.

When working with comment IDs, you can obtain them from story data, user profiles, or by exploring existing comment threads. The server handles the API interaction automatically, presenting the information in a clear, structured format.

Exploring Comment Trees

Hacker News comments are organized hierarchically, with replies nested under parent comments to form discussion threads. When you access a comment, the server provides information about its position in this tree structure, including references to its parent comment and any child replies.

To navigate a full discussion thread, start by requesting a comment and then traverse the tree by requesting its children. Each comment contains references to its replies, allowing you to explore the conversation depth-first or breadth-first depending on your needs. This structure makes it easy to follow specific conversation branches or map entire discussion threads.

Retrieving Story Comments

The most common way to access comments is through the story they discuss. When you retrieve story information, it includes a list of top-level comment IDs. Request these comments to see the initial responses to the submission, then explore their children to dive deeper into the discussion.

You can ask your assistant to summarize comment threads, identify key points of discussion, or find specific topics within a conversation. The server retrieves the raw data while your AI assistant processes and presents it according to your needs.

Practical Tips

Comment threads can be extensive, sometimes containing hundreds of nested replies. Consider focusing on top-level comments first to get an overview, then selectively explore branches that seem most relevant to your interests. You can ask your assistant to filter or prioritize comments based on criteria like score, author reputation, or content relevance.

Remember that comment data includes timestamps, allowing you to track how discussions evolve over time and identify when particular perspectives emerged.