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 offers unique insights into what's happening on the platform.

Top Stories represent submissions that have gained significant traction through community voting and engagement. These are the posts you'd see on Hacker News' front page—articles and discussions that the community has collectively elevated based on their perceived value. Top stories are ideal when you want to understand what's currently capturing widespread attention in the tech community.

New Stories show the most recent submissions as they arrive on the platform, regardless of their voting status. This feed is perfect for monitoring emerging content in real-time, catching breaking news, or identifying topics before they gain mainstream attention.

Best Stories highlight submissions that have demonstrated exceptional quality and sustained engagement over time. This feed applies additional ranking criteria beyond simple voting, surfacing content with lasting value rather than just momentary popularity.

Retrieving Story Feeds

To access any story feed, simply ask your AI assistant using natural language. The server handles the technical details automatically, returning structured information about each story.

For example, you can request:

• "Show me the top stories on Hacker News"
• "What are the latest new submissions?"
• "Get the best stories from Hacker News"

The server will return comprehensive data for each story, including the title, URL, author, submission time, score (number of upvotes), and the number of comments. This structured format makes it easy to scan multiple stories quickly or dive deeper into specific submissions that interest you.

Working with Story Data

Once you've retrieved stories, you can explore them further. Each story has a unique identifier that allows you to access its complete comment thread, providing context and community discussion around the submission. You can also look up the submitter's profile to understand their contribution history and expertise.

The real-time nature of the feeds means you're always working with current data, making the server suitable for monitoring specific topics, tracking trending discussions, or conducting timely research on what the technology community considers important at any moment.