Hacker News Search Search and monitor Hacker News stories, comments, and users via the Algolia HN Search API. No API key required. When to Use User asks about Hacker News discussions on a topic User wants to find HN posts about a company, product, or technology User wants to monitor HN for mentions of something User asks "what's trending on HN" or "what did HN think about X" User wants to find Show HN / Ask HN / Launch HN posts API Overview Base URL: https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1 Two search endpoints: /search — Relevance-sorted (best for finding specific topics) /search_by_date — Date-sorted (best for monitoring / recent activity) Rate Limits: 10,000 requests/hour (generous, no auth needed) How to Search Step 1: Build the URL https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?query=QUERY&tags=TAG&hitsPerPage=N&numericFilters=FILTERS Step 2: Fetch with web_fetch Use web_fetch to call the API. Response is JSON. Parameters Parameter Description Example query Search terms (URL-encoded) query=openai+gpt tags Filter by type (see below) tags=story hitsPerPage Results per page (max 1000) hitsPerPage=20 page Page number (0-indexed) page=0 numericFilters Numeric filters (see below) numericFilters=points>100 Tag Filters Use tags to filter by content type: Tag Description story Stories only comment Comments only show_hn Show HN posts ask_hn Ask HN posts front_page Currently on front page author_USERNAME Posts by a specific user story_ID Comments on a specific story Combine tags with commas (AND) or parentheses with commas (OR): tags=story,show_hn → Show HN stories (AND) tags=(story,comment) → Stories OR comments Numeric Filters Filter Description points>N Minimum points/upvotes num_comments>N Minimum comments created_at_i>TIMESTAMP After Unix timestamp created_at_i100,num_comments>50 Date Ranges To search within a time window, use Unix timestamps with created_at_i : Calculate the current Unix timestamp first (e.g., via exec: date +%s ), then subtract: Window Subtract from now Last 24 hours - 86400 Last 7 days - 604800 Last 30 days - 2592000 Example: if now is 1705312200 , last 7 days = numericFilters=created_at_i>1704707400 Response Format Each hit contains: { "objectID" : "12345" , "title" : "Story Title" , "url" : "https://example.com/article" , "author" : "username" , "points" : 150 , "num_comments" : 42 , "created_at" : "2024-01-15T10:30:00Z" , "created_at_i" : 1705312200 , "story_text" : "Text for Ask HN / Show HN (HTML)" , "_tags" : [ "story" , "author_username" , "story_12345" ] } For comments, hits also include: { "comment_text" : "The comment body (HTML)" , "story_id" : 12345 , "story_title" : "Parent Story Title" , "story_url" : "https://example.com" , "parent_id" : 12344 } The response wrapper includes: { "hits" : [ ... ] , "nbHits" : 1000 , "page" : 0 , "nbPages" : 50 , "hitsPerPage" : 20 } Constructing HN Links Story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id={objectID} Comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id={objectID} User: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id={author} Step-by-Step Instructions Searching for Stories on a Topic URL-encode the query Fetch: https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?query=YOUR_QUERY&tags=story&hitsPerPage=10 Parse the JSON response For each hit, present: title, points, num_comments, author, date, HN link, and original URL Finding Recent/Trending Discussions Calculate Unix timestamp for your time window (e.g., 7 days ago) Fetch: https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?query=YOUR_QUERY&tags=story&numericFilters=points>50,created_at_i>TIMESTAMP&hitsPerPage=10 Sort results by points or comments for "trending" Getting Comments on a Story Get the story's objectID from a search Fetch: https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?tags=comment,story_STORYID&hitsPerPage=20 Present comment_text, author, points for each Monitoring a Topic (Show Recent Mentions) Use /search_by_date instead of /search Fetch: https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search_by_date?query=YOUR_QUERY&tags=(story,comment)&hitsPerPage=20 Results are newest-first — useful for "what's new about X on HN" Finding a User's Posts Fetch: https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?tags=author_USERNAME,story&hitsPerPage=20 For their comments: tags=author_USERNAME,comment Output Format Present results as a clean list:

HN Results for "query" (N total)

1. Story Title (150 pts, 42 comments) By username · Jan 15, 2024 🔗 https://example.com/article 💬 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345
2. ... For comments:

HN Comments on "Story Title"

1. username (12 pts) · Jan 15, 2024

   First ~200 chars of the comment text... 💬 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345 Error Handling Empty results: Tell the user no results were found. Suggest broadening the query or removing filters. API error / timeout: Retry once. If still failing, inform the user the HN search API may be temporarily down. Rate limited (429): Unlikely at 10k/hr, but if hit, wait 60 seconds and retry. Malformed response: Check the URL construction — common issues are unencoded special characters in the query. Examples Example 1: "What's HN saying about Rust?" Fetch: https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?query=rust+programming&tags=story&hitsPerPage=5&numericFilters=points>50 Example 2: "Find Show HN posts about AI agents from the last month"

Calculate timestamp for 30 days ago, then:

Fetch: https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search_by_date?query=ai+agents&tags=show_hn&numericFilters=created_at_i>TIMESTAMP&hitsPerPage=10 Example 3: "What has pg posted recently?" Fetch: https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search_by_date?tags=author_pg&hitsPerPage=10 Data Source Algolia HN Search API — Free, no authentication required. Indexes all public Hacker News content in near real-time.