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Comment threads on Hacker News contain some of the most valuable technical discussions and expert insights on the internet. The MCP server makes it easy to access and navigate these conversations without manually browsing the site. Whether you're researching a specific topic or tracking community reactions, understanding how to work with comment threads will help you extract maximum value from Hacker News discussions.
To view comments on a specific story, you'll need the story's unique identifier. Once you have this ID, simply ask your AI assistant to retrieve the comments for that item. For example, you might say "show me the comments on story 12345678" or "what are people saying about this submission?"
The server will return structured comment data including the comment text, author, timestamp, score, and critically, the hierarchical relationships between comments. This allows you to understand which comments are replies to others, helping you follow conversation threads naturally.
Hacker News comments are organized in a tree structure, where replies nest under parent comments. When you retrieve comments through the server, you'll see this hierarchy preserved. Top-level comments respond directly to the story, while nested comments represent replies to other users.
To explore a specific branch of conversation, you can request individual comments by their ID. This is particularly useful when you want to focus on a specific discussion thread without processing the entire comment section. Ask your assistant to "show me comment 87654321 and its replies" to drill down into particular exchanges.
Not all comments carry equal weight in the community. Pay attention to comment scores, which indicate community approval through upvotes. Highly-scored comments often contain expert analysis, corrections to article claims, or particularly insightful perspectives.
You can also examine comment authors to identify domain experts. Once you find a user contributing valuable insights, you can retrieve their profile to explore their other comments and submissions, potentially uncovering additional relevant discussions.
Popular stories can accumulate hundreds or thousands of comments. Rather than retrieving everything at once, consider a targeted approach: start with top-level comments to get an overview of community reactions, then drill down into specific threads that seem most relevant to your interests. Your AI assistant can help filter and summarize large comment sections based on your specific questions or criteria.
The WhatsApp integration lets you send and receive messages, manage contacts, and automate conversations directly from your applications, enabling seamless communication workflows and customer engagement at scale.
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