hn-mcp
Server Configuration
Describes the environment variables required to run the server.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
No arguments | |||
Instructions
Guidance the server publishes about itself, which clients place ahead of the tool catalog so the model reads it before choosing anything.
This server publishes no instructions, or was last inspected before Glama recorded them.
Capabilities
Features and capabilities supported by this server
Protocol revision2025-11-25
| Capability | Details |
|---|---|
| tools | {
"listChanged": false
} |
| prompts | {
"listChanged": false
} |
| resources | {
"subscribe": false,
"listChanged": false
} |
Tools
Functions exposed to the LLM to take actions
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| list_storiesA | Browse Hacker News story feeds. Returns each story's title, score, author, comment count and links - enough to answer "what's on HN right now" in a single call. Feeds: top front page, ranked by HN's algorithm. Also contains job posts new most recently submitted, unranked best highest-scoring stories of the last few days ask Ask HN text and discussion posts show Show HN project launches job YC portfolio job postings top and new hold up to 500 ids; ask, show and job hold up to 200, so a large limit on those feeds returns fewer stories than requested. Every story carries an |
| get_storyA | Fetch one Hacker News story, job or poll by id. Use this when an id is already known - from list_stories, from search_stories, or from a news.ycombinator.com/item?id=N URL. Returns the story only; call get_discussion to read its comments. |
| get_discussionA | Read a Hacker News comment thread in one call. Returns the story plus a flat list of comments ordered breadth-first:
all top-level replies, then all of their replies, and so on. HN ranks
Nesting is carried by each comment's Popular threads are wide - often over a hundred top-level comments - so max_top_level bounds how many of them are opened. That is what leaves budget for replies: without it the comment cap is spent entirely on opening statements and no reply is ever reached. Lower it to read an argument in depth, raise it to survey opinions broadly. Big threads will not fit. When anything is omitted, Deleted and dead comments are skipped entirely. |
| search_storiesA | Full-text search across all of Hacker News history. Use this for anything the feeds cannot answer: a topic, a company, a phrase, or anything older than the current front page. The feed tools only see what is on HN right now; this sees everything ever posted. sort="relevance" is right for topic questions. sort="date" is right for "what is the latest on X", since the best match may be years old. days_back filters by age, so days_back=30 with sort="date" answers "what has HN said about X recently". |
| get_userA | Look up a Hacker News user profile. Returns karma, account age, bio and submission count. Usernames are case-sensitive, and only accounts with public activity are exposed by HN's API. This returns the profile, not the user's posts. To find what someone submitted, use search_stories. |
Prompts
Interactive templates invoked by user choice
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| summarize_thread | Summarize an HN discussion, organized by disagreement rather than order. |
| whats_new | Find what HN has said about a topic recently, newest first. |
| front_page_brief | A themed digest of the HN front page, rather than a list. |
Resources
Contextual data attached and managed by the client
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No resources | |
TDQS
Scored across 5 tools
Each tool targets a distinct resource+action: search_stories is full-text history search, list_stories is live feeds, get_story is a single item by id, get_discussion is a comment thread, and get_user is a profile. The descriptions actively contrast the easily-confused pairs (search vs. feeds, story vs. discussion), so an agent can pick correctly without guessing.
All five tools follow the same verb_noun snake_case pattern (search_stories, list_stories, get_story, get_discussion, get_user). The verbs also map cleanly onto intent: list for collections, search for queries, get for single lookups.
Five tools is a tight, well-scoped surface for the Hacker News domain — search, browse, item, thread, user — with no filler or redundant variants. Each tool covers a workflow the others cannot answer.
Core lifecycle is covered: discovery via feeds/search, item retrieval, comment reading, and user lookup. The main gap is author-scoped browsing — get_user explicitly says to use search_stories for a user's submissions, but search_stories is documented only as text search, so per-user submission listing and single-comment/subthread fetch are workarounds rather than first-class operations.