Understanding Item IDs in Hacker News

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 created, and they serve as the primary way to retrieve specific content directly through the Hacker News MCP Server.

Why Query by ID?

Querying by item ID is essential when you need to access specific content that you've already identified. Perhaps you're following up on a particular discussion, analyzing a specific story over time, or retrieving content referenced elsewhere. Unlike browsing feeds that show curated lists, ID-based queries give you direct, precise access to exactly what you need.

How to Query Specific Items

To retrieve a specific item, you simply need its numerical ID. You can request content through natural language queries to your AI assistant. For example:

• "Get Hacker News item 37845290"
• "Show me the details for item ID 37845290"
• "Retrieve Hacker News story 37845290"

The server will fetch the complete information about that item, including its type (story, comment, poll, etc.), title (if applicable), text content, author, timestamp, score, and any associated metadata.

Finding Item IDs

Item IDs appear in several places throughout Hacker News:

• In URLs: When viewing content on Hacker News, the item ID appears in the URL as item?id=37845290
• In story feeds: When you retrieve lists of top or new stories, each result includes its item ID
• In comment threads: Each comment has its own unique ID, which is provided when you retrieve a story's comments

What You'll Get Back

When you query an item by ID, the server returns structured data that varies based on the item type:

For stories: You'll receive the title, URL (if it's a link post), submission time, author username, current score, and the number of comments.

For comments: The response includes the comment text, author, timestamp, and references to parent items, allowing you to understand the comment's context within a discussion thread.

For polls: You'll get the poll question along with its associated poll options and voting data.

Practical Applications

Direct ID queries are particularly useful for monitoring specific stories over time to track how scores and comment counts change, retrieving full comment trees by starting with a root comment ID, or building references to specific discussions in your own documentation or analysis.

This straightforward querying mechanism ensures you always have direct access to any Hacker News content, making it easy to build sophisticated workflows around specific items of interest.