# Hacker News — MCP Server

> Search and read Hacker News stories, comments and users from an AI agent.

**Source:** https://mcpplaygroundonline.com/mcp-servers/hackernews  
**Transport:** stdio  
**Requires auth:** No

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## What it does

The Hacker News MCP server wraps the Hacker News API as four MCP tools. Models can fetch lists of stories by type (top, new, ask_hn, show_hn), retrieve the comments for a specific story, search stories by query, and look up a user's profile. It runs as a stdio process and requires no credentials, since the HN API is public. Because it returns live data, an agent can summarise what the community is discussing today, track sentiment on a launch, or assemble a daily tech digest — none of which the model could do from its training data alone.

## Tools exposed

- get_stories — fetch top, new, ask_hn or show_hn story lists (without comments)
- get_story_info — retrieve a story's comments and discussion thread
- search_stories — search Hacker News stories by query (shorter queries return more)
- get_user_info — look up a Hacker News user's profile

## Example queries you can run

- "Summarise the top five Hacker News stories right now and why each is trending."
- "Search Hacker News for discussions about MCP and tell me the general sentiment."
- "Pull the comments on the top Show HN today and list the most common piece of feedback."
- "What has user "pg" posted about recently? Give me the highlights."

## Details

- **Recommended model:** anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 — Fetching and summarising HN threads is lightweight, so Claude Haiku 4.5 keeps it fast and cheap. Use Sonnet 4.5 for deeper sentiment analysis across many threads.
- **Transport:** stdio
- **Authentication:** Not required — No API key required — the Hacker News API is public. Deploy a sandboxed hosted instance from the MCP Playground catalog in one click and start querying immediately.
- **Official source:** [erithwik/mcp-hn on GitHub](https://github.com/erithwik/mcp-hn)

## Frequently asked questions

### What is the Hacker News MCP server?

It is an open-source MCP server (mcp-hn) that gives AI models live access to Hacker News. It exposes tools to fetch story lists, read comment threads, search stories and look up users through the Model Context Protocol, with no API key.

### Which tools does the Hacker News MCP server expose?

Four tools: get_stories to fetch top/new/ask_hn/show_hn lists, get_story_info to read a story's comments, search_stories to search by query, and get_user_info to look up a user's profile.

### Does the Hacker News MCP server need an API key?

No. It reads from the public Hacker News API, so it runs without any credentials — one of the quickest MCP servers to deploy and test.

### What can I build with the Hacker News MCP server?

Tech-trend trackers, daily digest bots, launch sentiment monitors and research agents that need current developer-community discussion. Because the data is live, the agent can report on what is being discussed today, not just at the model's training cutoff.

### How do I test a Hacker News MCP server in the browser?

Open MCP Agent Studio, deploy the hosted Hacker News server from the catalog (no key needed), pick a model and ask about today's stories. You can watch each get_stories and search_stories call and its result live.

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_Test this server across 40+ models on MCP Playground: https://mcpplaygroundonline.com/mcp-servers/hackernews — free, no install._