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Retrieving Top Stories and Story Feeds
Overview
The Hacker News MCP Server provides several methods for retrieving stories and feeds from the platform. Understanding these retrieval options helps you access the most relevant content for your needs, whether you're tracking trending discussions, discovering new submissions, or researching specific topics.
Available Story Feeds
Top Stories
Top stories represent the most popular content currently on Hacker News, ranked by community votes and recency. These are the submissions that have risen to the front page and are receiving the most engagement. To retrieve top stories, simply ask your AI assistant for "top stories from Hacker News" or "what's trending on Hacker News." This feed is ideal for staying current with what the tech community considers most important right now.
New Stories
The new stories feed shows the latest submissions as they arrive on Hacker News, regardless of their vote count or popularity. This feed gives you immediate access to emerging content before it has been vetted by the community. Request new stories when you want to discover fresh content early or monitor specific topics as they're submitted.
Best Stories
Best stories represent submissions that have demonstrated lasting value and sustained engagement. This feed uses Hacker News' ranking algorithm to identify content that has maintained high quality over time. Access best stories when you're looking for consistently valuable content rather than just what's currently popular.
Retrieving Individual Stories
You can request specific stories by referencing them in natural language. For example, ask about "the top story on Hacker News" or "the story about [specific topic]" and the server will retrieve the relevant information, including the title, URL, author, score, timestamp, and number of comments.
Working with Story Data
When you retrieve stories, the server returns structured information that includes:
- Title and URL: The story headline and link to the source
- Author: The Hacker News username of the submitter
- Score: Current community votes (points)
- Time: When the story was submitted
- Comments: Number of comments and the discussion ID
This structured data makes it easy to analyze trends, compare stories, or dive deeper into specific discussions.
Best Practices
For real-time monitoring, regularly check the new stories feed. For curated content, focus on top and best stories. When researching specific topics, combine story retrieval with comment access to understand both the submission and community reaction.
Perplexity on Metorial
The Perplexity integration lets you search the web and access real-time information directly through AI-powered queries, enabling your assistant to retrieve current facts, news, and research without leaving the conversation.
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