Understanding Story Feeds

The Hacker News MCP Server provides access to several curated story feeds that reflect different aspects of community activity. Each feed serves a distinct purpose and helps you discover content based on your specific needs.

Top Stories represent submissions that have gained significant traction through community upvotes and engagement. These are the posts currently featured on Hacker News' front page—the most visible and discussed items at any given moment.

New Stories show the latest submissions as they arrive on the platform, giving you real-time access to fresh content before the community has fully evaluated it. This feed is ideal for early discovery and monitoring emerging topics.

Best Stories highlight submissions that have demonstrated sustained value over time, combining factors like score, engagement, and longevity to surface high-quality content.

Retrieving Stories Through Natural Language

Using the server is straightforward—simply ask your AI assistant for the information you need. The system understands natural language requests and translates them into the appropriate API calls.

To access top stories, you might ask: "What are the current top stories on Hacker News?" or "Show me the front page of Hacker News." The server will retrieve the most recent top stories with complete metadata including titles, URLs, authors, scores, and submission times.

For new submissions, try requests like: "What's new on Hacker News?" or "Show me the latest submissions." This gives you access to content as it's posted, before community voting has determined its prominence.

To explore best stories, ask: "What are the best stories on Hacker News?" This surfaces content the community has deemed particularly valuable.

Working with Story Data

Each story returned includes comprehensive information: the submission title, source URL (if linking to external content), the username of the submitter, current score, number of comments, and submission timestamp. This structured data allows you to quickly assess relevance and decide which stories merit deeper investigation.

You can request specific numbers of stories—for example, "Show me the top 10 stories" or "Give me the 5 newest submissions"—to control the volume of information returned.

Diving Deeper

Once you've identified interesting stories, you can explore further by requesting comment threads, which often contain valuable insights and technical discussions. You can also investigate the profiles of submitters to understand their expertise and contribution history.

The real-time nature of the server means you're always working with current data, making it excellent for monitoring trending topics or tracking discussions as they develop.