Understanding Item IDs

Every piece of content on Hacker News—whether it's a story, comment, poll, or job posting—has a unique numerical identifier called an item ID. These IDs are assigned sequentially as content is added to the platform, making them a reliable way to reference specific pieces of content directly.

Retrieving Items by ID

When you know the specific item ID you want to access, you can query it directly through the Hacker News MCP Server. This is the most precise way to retrieve content, as it bypasses feeds and lists to fetch exactly what you need.

To query a specific item, simply ask your AI assistant to retrieve the Hacker News item with the desired ID number. For example, you might say "Get Hacker News item 35467890" or "Show me details for item ID 35467890." The server will fetch the complete data for that item, including all available metadata.

What Information You'll Get

The information returned depends on the type of item you're querying:

For stories, you'll receive the title, URL (if it's an external link), the author's username, submission timestamp, current score, and the number of comments. You'll also get the item's descendants count, which shows how many total comments exist in the entire discussion tree.

For comments, the response includes the comment text, the author's username, the timestamp, any score information, and crucially, the parent item ID. This parent reference allows you to understand the comment's context within a larger discussion thread.

For polls, you'll get the poll question, possible answers, and voting information, along with the same metadata present in regular stories.

Common Use Cases

Direct ID queries are particularly useful when you're following up on specific content. If you saw an interesting discussion earlier and noted its ID, you can retrieve it later for deeper analysis. They're also essential when traversing comment threads—each comment contains IDs for its parent and children, allowing you to navigate the conversation structure programmatically.

Developers and researchers often use ID-based queries when building monitoring tools or conducting longitudinal studies, as the stable IDs make it easy to track specific items over time and observe how their scores or comment counts evolve.

Finding Item IDs

Item IDs appear in Hacker News URLs—for example, news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35467890 references item 35467890. They're also included in the data returned when you query story feeds or user profiles, making it easy to identify items of interest and then query them individually for complete details.