What Are Story Types?

When you connect to Hacker News through the OpenMesh MCP server, you'll encounter three primary story feeds: Top Stories, New Stories, and Best Stories. Each feed serves a different purpose and provides a unique view into the Hacker News community. Understanding these distinctions will help you access the most relevant content for your needs.

Top Stories

Top Stories represent the current front page of Hacker News—the submissions that are actively trending right now. These stories have gained enough upvotes and engagement to rise above thousands of other submissions, making them the most visible content on the platform.

When you request Top Stories through the server, you're seeing what the Hacker News community considers important at this very moment. The ranking algorithm considers both the number of votes and the age of the submission, meaning stories gradually fall down the list as they get older, even if they continue receiving upvotes.

Best for: Staying current with breaking tech news, identifying hot topics of discussion, and understanding what's capturing the community's immediate attention.

New Stories

New Stories show you the latest submissions as they arrive on Hacker News, presented in reverse chronological order. This feed is unfiltered by votes or community engagement—it's simply the most recent posts, regardless of quality or popularity.

This feed moves quickly, with new submissions appearing constantly throughout the day. Many of these stories will never gain traction or reach the front page, but this is where every Top Story begins its journey.

Best for: Discovering content before it trends, monitoring for specific topics or keywords in real-time, and catching emerging discussions early before they become crowded.

Best Stories

Best Stories represent the highest-quality submissions based on sustained community engagement. This feed uses a different algorithm than Top Stories, identifying posts that have demonstrated lasting value through continued upvotes and discussion over time.

Think of Best Stories as the "greatest hits" collection—submissions that not only gained initial traction but proved their worth through sustained community interest. This feed changes more slowly than Top Stories, filtering out flash-in-the-pan content in favor of genuinely valuable discussions.

Best for: Finding high-quality content worth your time, research and analysis requiring vetted information, and discovering substantial discussions with depth and expert commentary.

Choosing the Right Feed

Your choice of story type depends on your goal. Need to know what's happening right now? Use Top Stories. Looking for hidden gems or monitoring specific topics? Try New Stories. Want curated, high-quality content? Best Stories is your answer. The OpenMesh server gives you access to all three, making it easy to switch between perspectives based on what you need at any moment.