Overview

The Hacker News MCP Server provides several methods for retrieving stories and feeds from Hacker News. Understanding these retrieval options helps you access the most relevant content for your needs, whether you're looking for trending discussions, fresh submissions, or highly-rated posts.

Available Story Feeds

The server supports three primary story feed types that mirror the main sections of Hacker News:

Top Stories represent the most popular and highly-voted content currently featured on the Hacker News front page. These stories have gained significant community traction and typically reflect what's most important to the tech community at this moment. Top stories are ideal when you want to understand current hot topics or see what's generating the most discussion.

New Stories provide access to the latest submissions as they arrive on Hacker News. This feed shows stories in chronological order, giving you visibility into emerging content before it gains widespread attention. Use this feed when you want to monitor breaking news, track specific topics as they're submitted, or discover content early.

Best Stories showcase submissions that have demonstrated sustained quality and engagement over time. These stories have received consistent positive feedback from the community and represent highly-valued content. This feed is perfect for content discovery and finding thoroughly-vetted resources.

Retrieving Stories

To access any of these feeds, simply ask your AI assistant for the type of stories you're interested in. For example, you might request "Show me the top stories on Hacker News" or "What are the latest new submissions?"

The server returns structured information for each story, including:

• Story title and URL
• Author username
• Score (number of upvotes)
• Submission time
• Number of comments
• Unique story identifier

Working with Story Data

Once you retrieve a story feed, you can dive deeper into individual stories. Use the story identifier to access the full comment thread, explore discussions, or gather additional details. You can also look up the submitting user's profile to understand their contribution history and expertise.

Story feeds typically return multiple items, allowing you to browse through several stories at once and identify those most relevant to your interests. The data structure makes it easy to sort, filter, or analyze stories based on criteria like score, time, or comment activity.

Practical Tips

For monitoring purposes, regularly check the new stories feed to catch emerging discussions early. When researching topics, the best stories feed provides high-quality, community-validated content. For understanding current sentiment and priorities within the tech community, top stories offer the most representative snapshot of what matters right now.