Overview

When working with the Hacker News MCP Server, you'll often need to retrieve specific items such as individual stories, comments, or posts using their unique identifiers. This direct access method is essential when you know exactly which item you want to examine, whether you're following up on a particular discussion, analyzing a specific story, or researching a comment thread.

Understanding Hacker News Item IDs

Every piece of content on Hacker News—whether it's a story, comment, poll, or job posting—receives a unique numerical identifier when it's created. These IDs are sequential and permanent, meaning once an item is assigned an ID, it retains that identifier indefinitely. You'll encounter these IDs in URLs (like news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345678) or when browsing story and comment data through the server.

Querying Items by ID

To retrieve a specific item using the Hacker News MCP Server, you simply need to request that item using its unique identifier. You can ask your AI assistant in natural language to fetch the item, such as:

• "Get Hacker News item 38743892"
• "Show me details for HN item 38650000"
• "Retrieve the content of Hacker News post 38700123"

The server will process your request, fetch the item from Hacker News, and return structured data containing all available information about that item.

What You'll Receive

When you query a specific item by ID, the server returns comprehensive details about that item, including:

• Type: Whether it's a story, comment, poll, or job posting
• Author: The username of the person who submitted it
• Content: The text of comments or poll options, or the URL for story submissions
• Metadata: Timestamps, scores (points), and the current number of comments
• Relationships: Parent item IDs for comments, allowing you to understand thread hierarchy

Common Use Cases

Querying by ID is particularly useful when you want to:

• Follow specific discussions: Track a particular story or comment thread over time by checking its ID periodically
• Deep-dive analysis: Examine the complete details of items referenced in other queries or external sources
• Thread reconstruction: Build a complete picture of a conversation by retrieving comments and their parent items
• Verification: Confirm details about specific submissions when you have the ID from another source

Best Practices

When working with item IDs, remember that not all IDs necessarily exist—some may have been deleted or never created due to gaps in the sequence. If you request a non-existent or deleted item, the server will indicate that the item couldn't be found. Additionally, comment threads can be deeply nested, so you may need to make multiple queries to traverse an entire discussion tree by following parent and child relationships.