Hacker News MCP Server

A new open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server gives Claude Desktop and Claude Code read-only access to Hacker News through four tools: browsing ranked feeds, retrieving items with nested comment trees, looking up user profiles, and full-text search via Algolia. The server, built in Rust and available on GitHub, requires no API keys or authentication and communicates over stdio, with tools marked as read-only to prevent any data mutation. The release expands Claude's capabilities by enabling direct interaction with Hacker News content within the AI assistant's interface.

A small, read-only Model Context Protocol https://modelcontextprotocol.io server that gives Claude Desktop and Claude Code first-class access to Hacker News. It speaks MCP over stdio and talks to two public, no-auth APIs: Official HN Firebase — https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/ — feeds, items, and users. Algolia HN Search — https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/ — full-text search. No API keys, no accounts, nothing is mutated. Every tool is marked read-only. | Tool | When to reach for it | |---|---| get stories | Browse a ranked feed. Returns a compact list id, title, author, score, comment count, url, hn url with no comment trees — ideal for scanning the front page or a section. Params: category top / new / best / ask / show / job , default top , limit default 30, max 100 . | get item | Go deep on one thread. Returns the item plus a nested comment tree walked breadth-first. The tree is hard-capped by max comments default 50 and max depth default 3 so it never blows up your context; a truncation note tells you when replies were cut. Dead/deleted comments are skipped. Params: id required , include comments default true , max depth default 3 , max comments default 50 . | get user | Look up a profile by username case-sensitive . Returns karma, the about text, account creation date, and submitted-item count. Param: id required . | search | Full-text search across all of HN via Algolia. Params: query required , sort relevance default, or date , tags e.g. story , comment , ask hn , show hn , front page , min points int , limit default 20, max 100 . Returns hits with title, author, points, comment count, date, story URL, and hn url . | Two conventions across all tools: every Unix timestamp is returned both raw time and as an ISO 8601 UTC string time iso , and every item carries a derived hn url https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=<id . Quick rule of thumb: get stories / search to find things, get item to read one thing in depth. Requires a recent stable Rust toolchain edition 2021 . git clone https://github.com/devrelopers/hackernews-mcp cd hackernews-mcp cargo build --release The binary lands at target/release/hackernews-mcp . Add an entry to your claude desktop config.json : macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude desktop config.json Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude desktop config.json { "mcpServers": { "hackernews": { "command": "/absolute/path/to/hackernews-mcp/target/release/hackernews-mcp" } } } Use the absolute path to the binary you just built e.g. /Users/you/hackernews-mcp/target/release/hackernews-mcp . Restart Claude Desktop; the four tools will appear under the 🔌 tools menu. claude mcp add hackernews -- /absolute/path/to/hackernews-mcp/target/release/hackernews-mcp - Item fetches in get stories and get item run concurrently with a politeness cap of ~10 in-flight requests. - Logs are written to stderr so they never corrupt the JSON-RPC stream on stdout. Set RUST LOG=debug for verbose tracing. - Missing items/users return an actionable error Item <id not found — it may be deleted or the ID may be invalid. rather than a panic. src/ main.rs tokio entrypoint + stdio transport wiring client.rs shared reqwest client over the Firebase + Algolia APIs tools.rs the four MCP tools + breadth-first comment-tree walker types.rs data models and compact output shapes MIT — see LICENSE /devrelopers/hackernews-mcp/blob/main/LICENSE .