Hacker News MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides tools for fetching stories from Hacker News. This server parses the HTML content from news.ycombinator.com and provides structured data for different types of stories (top, new, ask, show, jobs).

Features

Fetch different types of stories (top, new, ask, show, jobs)
Get structured data including titles, URLs, points, authors, timestamps, and comment counts
Configurable limit on number of stories returned
Clean error handling and validation

Installation

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/pskill9/hn-server
cd hn-server

Install dependencies:

npm install

Build the server:

npm run build

Add to your MCP settings configuration file (location depends on your system):

For VSCode Claude extension:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hacker-news": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/hn-server/build/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Usage

The server provides a tool called get_stories that can be used to fetch stories from Hacker News.

Tool: get_stories

Parameters:

type (string): Type of stories to fetch
- Options: 'top', 'new', 'ask', 'show', 'jobs'
- Default: 'top'
limit (number): Number of stories to return
- Range: 1-30
- Default: 10

Example usage:

use_mcp_tool with:
server_name: "hacker-news"
tool_name: "get_stories"
arguments: {
  "type": "top",
  "limit": 5
}

Sample output:

[
  {
    "title": "Example Story Title",
    "url": "https://example.com/story",
    "points": 100,
    "author": "username",
    "time": "2024-12-28T00:03:05",
    "commentCount": 50,
    "rank": 1
  },
  // ... more stories
]

Integrating with Claude

To use this MCP server with Claude, you'll need to:

Have the Claude desktop app or VSCode Claude extension installed
Configure the MCP server in your settings
Use Claude's natural language interface to interact with Hacker News

Configuration

For the Claude desktop app, add the server configuration to:

// ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS)
// %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows)
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hacker-news": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/hn-server/build/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

For the VSCode Claude extension, add to:

// VSCode Settings JSON
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hacker-news": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/hn-server/build/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Example Interactions

Once configured, you can interact with Claude using natural language to fetch Hacker News stories. Examples:

"Show me the top 5 stories from Hacker News"
"What are the latest Ask HN posts?"
"Get me the top Show HN submissions from today"

Claude will automatically use the appropriate parameters to fetch the stories you want.

Story Object Structure

Each story object contains:

title (string): The story title
url (string, optional): URL of the story (may be internal HN URL for text posts)
points (number): Number of upvotes
author (string): Username of the poster
time (string): Timestamp of when the story was posted
commentCount (number): Number of comments
rank (number): Position in the list

Development

The server is built using:

TypeScript
Model Context Protocol SDK
Axios for HTTP requests
Cheerio for HTML parsing

To modify the server:

Make changes to src/index.ts
Rebuild:

npm run build

Error Handling

The server includes robust error handling for:

Invalid story types
Network failures
HTML parsing errors
Invalid parameter values

Errors are returned with appropriate error codes and descriptive messages.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

MIT License - feel free to use this in your own projects.