Overview

When working with Hacker News content through the MCP server, you'll often need to retrieve specific items—whether they're stories, comments, or other content—using their unique identifiers. Every item on Hacker News has a numeric ID that serves as its permanent reference. This guide explains how to query these specific items effectively.

Understanding Hacker News IDs

Each piece of content on Hacker News—stories, comments, polls, and jobs—receives a unique numeric identifier when created. These IDs are sequential and permanent, meaning an item will always retain the same ID. You might encounter these IDs in URLs (like news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345678), in API responses, or when exploring comment threads where each comment has its own distinct ID.

Querying Items by ID

To retrieve a specific item, you simply need to request it using its numeric identifier. When you ask your AI assistant connected to the Hacker News MCP server for an item by ID, the server fetches the complete details for that piece of content.

For example, you might ask: "Get me Hacker News item 38471956" or "Show me the details for HN story ID 38471956." The server will return structured information including the item's title (if it's a story), author, submission time, score, URL, and the text content if applicable.

What You'll Receive

When querying a specific item, the response includes all available metadata associated with that content. For stories, you'll see the title, URL, points, author username, and submission timestamp. For comments, you'll receive the comment text, author, timestamp, and references to parent items and any child comments (replies).

This granular access is particularly useful when you've identified specific discussions of interest—perhaps from a list of top stories—and want to dive deeper into the details or explore the comment thread.

Practical Applications

Querying by ID proves valuable in several scenarios. You might track specific stories over time to monitor score changes and community engagement. When researching particular discussions, you can request specific comment IDs to examine individual responses. If you're building a system to archive or analyze Hacker News content, ID-based retrieval ensures you're accessing precisely the items you need without ambiguity.

Tips for Effective Querying

Always use the complete numeric ID without any prefixes or formatting. The server expects raw numbers like 38471956 rather than formatted strings. If you're working with multiple items, you can request them sequentially, though be mindful of rate limits and server responsiveness when making numerous requests in quick succession.