Understanding Comment Threads

Comment threads on Hacker News contain some of the platform's most valuable content—expert insights, technical discussions, and nuanced perspectives that often surpass the linked articles themselves. The Hacker News MCP Server makes accessing and navigating these discussions straightforward through simple natural language requests.

Retrieving a Comment Thread

To access comments for a specific story, you'll need the story's unique identifier. You can obtain this by first retrieving a story from any feed (top, new, or best stories), then request its associated comments. Simply ask your AI assistant something like "Show me the comments for story 12345678" or "What are people saying about this article?"

The server returns comments in a structured format, including the comment text, author, timestamp, score, and importantly, the relationships between comments and their replies.

Navigating Nested Conversations

Hacker News comments are organized hierarchically—replies to comments create nested threads that can extend several levels deep. When you retrieve a comment thread, you'll receive data that shows this parent-child structure.

Each comment includes references to its child comments, allowing you to traverse the conversation tree. You can explore an entire thread depth-first, following a single conversation chain to its conclusion, or breadth-first, reviewing all top-level comments before diving into specific discussions.

Understanding Comment Data

Each comment provides several key pieces of information:

• Text content: The actual comment body, which may include formatting
• Author: The Hacker News username of the commenter
• Time: When the comment was posted
• Score: Community votes the comment has received (when available)
• Parent and child relationships: The comment's position in the thread structure

Practical Navigation Strategies

When dealing with lengthy threads containing hundreds of comments, consider these approaches:

Focus on high-level comments first: Start by reviewing top-level comments to get an overview of community sentiment before diving into nested discussions.

Follow specific conversations: If a particular comment sparks your interest, trace its child comments to follow that specific discussion thread.

Search for expert commentary: Request information about specific commenters known for expertise in relevant areas, then locate their contributions within the thread.

Working with Large Threads

Popular stories can accumulate hundreds or thousands of comments. The server allows you to retrieve comment data programmatically, making it possible to filter, analyze, or summarize large discussions efficiently. You might ask your AI assistant to "summarize the main points from this comment thread" or "find comments discussing security concerns."

Real-Time Updates

Since the server accesses live Hacker News data, you can revisit comment threads to see new replies and updated scores as discussions evolve, keeping you current with ongoing conversations about topics that matter to you.