MCP server · Research

Hacker News MCP server

Lets your AI pull top Hacker News stories, comments, and search results right in the chat.

This is a small helper that connects your AI assistant to Hacker News, the popular tech news site. Once it is set up, you can just ask your AI for the top stories, a comment thread, or a search, and it will fetch the answers for you. It is handy if you follow tech news, write newsletters, or research trends.

What is an MCP server? The 30-second version

On its own, your AI can only chat with you using what it already knows. An MCP server is a small helper program that gives your AI a new skill or a connection to an app or service. This one connects your AI to Hacker News, so it can look up stories, comments, and search results for you when you ask. You do not need an account or a password for it.

What this MCP server does

You ask your AI something like what is popular on Hacker News today. The AI passes your request to this helper program. The helper talks to Hacker News' public website and pulls back the stories or comments you asked about. Then your AI shows you a clean list or summary right in the chat. You never have to open a browser or copy links yourself.

Flow diagram: you ask your AI “What is popular on Hacker News today?”, the Hacker News MCP server connects it to Hacker News, and you get back A tidy list in your chat.

Click to zoom

What you can do with it

Get the top stories from the last few hours, ranked by score
Look up full details for one specific story
Read the top-level comment thread for a story
Search all of Hacker News by keyword
Browse a category like new, best, ask, show, or job
Pull a batch of stories to summarize into a digest

Try asking your AI

“What are the top 5 stories on Hacker News in the last 6 hours?”
“Show me the comments thread for HN story 38420000”
“Search Hacker News for posts about RAG performance, sorted by date”
“Find the top 3 Show HN posts about AI agents this week”

What it gives back to you

You get back a tidy list of stories with titles, links, scores, authors, and comment counts. For a comment thread, you get the top-level comments in Hacker News order. For a search, you get matching posts and comments. Everything shows up as normal text in your chat, so you can ask follow-up questions right away.

Before you start

What you need

A tool that can run MCP servers, like the Claude desktop app or Claude Code
uv (a free helper tool you install once with pip install uv or brew install uv)

Good to know

It only reads public Hacker News data, so it cannot change or delete anything, but very large requests can be slow or time out.

Install it with your AI

Add Hacker News MCP server to your AI, no technical skills needed

You don't install anything by hand. You copy one prompt, paste it into an AI that can work on your computer, and it checks, installs and connects the server for you, asking you when it needs something.

Sign in to get the install prompt

Members get a ready-made prompt that lets the Claude desktop app check Hacker News MCP server, install it and connect it for them, step by step. You don't need any technical skills: you copy, paste and answer a few questions. Your connected AI can also find and install any of the 4,066 MCP servers here for you.