Hacker News MCP server

How an agent would call it

Two steps: search returns refs, then data_fetch opens one of them. The arguments below are the arguments that were sent.

{
  "tool": "search",
  "arguments": {
    "query": "model context protocol",
    "sources": [
      "hackernews"
    ],
    "limit": 2,
    "runId": "<from run_begin>"
  }
}

{
  "tool": "data_fetch",
  "arguments": {
    "sourceId": "hackernews",
    "ref": {
      "id": "42237424"
    },
    "runId": "<from run_begin>"
  }
}

This runs against an account — send Authorization: Bearer <token> with the call. Get one at app.bedrocktap.com/dashboard/tokens; the free tier needs no card, and it reaches hackernews like every other source.

What it costs. 0.25 credits per story or comment returned, and 0.25 per fetch. The search above returned 2 refs and cost 0.5 credits; the fetch cost 0.25.

What came back

{
  "ref": {
    "id": "42237424",
    "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42237424",
    "title": "Model Context Protocol"
  },
  "text": "Model Context Protocol",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-09-12T14:56:13.996Z"
}

Each ref carried kind, author, points, comments, createdAt and outboundUrl in its meta — the first hit stood at 872 points and 258 comments. The fetched payload added by, score, descendants, time, type, url and kids, the ids of every top-level reply.

Observed 2026-09-12. One call against a live source — ask again tomorrow and the rows move.

What a row contains

One row is one Hacker News item: its numeric id, the permalink on news.ycombinator.com, and the title. The outbound link a story points at travels separately as outboundUrl, so a "Show HN" row never loses the discussion behind the author’s own site. meta carries the author, the point score, the comment count and the post time. A comment’s title is written as `comment on: <parent story>`, so a comment can never be read as a story.

A question it answers. How did engineers react when this launched, and did the reaction hold up a year later?

Routing guidance

What an agent reads to decide whether hackernews is the right source, and what to reach for when it is not.

Answers

Tech-industry opinion and launch reaction. Sentiment on a company, tool or trend among engineers and founders. Comments carry the candid opinion; stories carry what got attention.

Query shape

Plain keywords. Story, comment or both is configurable, as is relevance versus date ordering.

Price

Priced in credits, per row, per query or per call depending on the source. Every call is quoted before it runs — `cost_estimate` returns the exact figure and spends nothing. See /pricing.

Legal basis

Public API — the platform’s own documented, openly available interface.

Latency

Fast (~1-2s).

Prefer instead

`reddit` for consumer or hobbyist opinion — this skews startup, infrastructure and developer tooling. `stackexchange` for concrete technical problems.

Cannot answer

Anything not posted there, search volume, or vendor-neutral facts — this is a specific and opinionated community.

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