Search Hacker News stories and comments via HN's Algolia API.

Use this to find HN discussion on a topic, surface Ask HN / Show HN posts, or pull the most recent items in a time window. Returns a JSON object with a hits array.

Parameters:

• query (str, required): the search phrase, e.g. "rust async runtime".

• tag (str): which item kind to search. One of "story" (default), "comment", "ask_hn", "show_hn", or "all".

• time_range (str): restrict by recency. One of "past_24h", "past_week", "past_month", or "all_time" (default).

• sort (str): "relevance" (default) ranks by Algolia relevance; "date" returns newest first.

• limit (int): number of hits to return, 1-50 (default 10).

Each hit has: id, title, url, points, author, num_comments, created_at (ISO8601), and excerpt (a highlighted snippet when Algolia provides one). For comment hits, title/url/points are usually null and the matched text appears in excerpt. An empty search returns {"hits": []} rather than an error.