Hacker News via MCP
A Hacker News MCP server for launches, critiques and comment threads
Search Hacker News from Claude, Cursor or Claude Code and read whole comment threads. Useful when you want the technical crowd's unfiltered reaction to a launch, a competitor or an idea.
Included in the free trial
Free trial. No credit card required.
What you get
What the Hacker News server does
- Search HN stories and discussions by topic or product name
- Pull a full thread with nested comments using get_thread
- Included in the free trial
- Combine HN with Reddit and X in the same query
Try it
Prompts for Hacker News
Paste any of these into your assistant once the server is connected.
- You ask
Find Hacker News discussions about self-hosted analytics from the past month and list the objections people raise.
search_threads returns the stories. get_thread then reads the comments behind them.
- You ask
Get the comments on our Show HN thread and sort the feedback into bugs, feature requests and pricing.
get_thread returns the nested comment tree for the thread URL.
- You ask
How does the HN crowd talk about my competitor compared with Reddit?
One search across HN and Reddit with the platforms parameter.
Tools
Tools that work on Hacker News
search_threadsSearch Reddit, X, Hacker News, Bluesky and Facebook. Spam and AI-generated noise is filtered out. Returns raw posts with links.
querystringrequired- What to search for.
platformsstring[]- Limit to specific platforms. Defaults to all your plan allows.
communitystring- Subreddit or community to search within.
timestring- Time range, e.g. day, week, month, year.
limitnumber- Max posts to return.
Example response
{ "posts": [ { "platform": "reddit", "title": "The new export flow is much slower after the update", "body": "Since the last release, exporting takes over a minute...", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/example/comments/abc123/", "author": "example_user", "community": "r/example", "engagement": { "upvotes": 214, "comments": 58 }, "created_at": "2026-09-30T14:12:00Z" } ] }get_threadFetch a full Reddit or Hacker News thread with its nested comment tree.
urlstringrequired- Thread URL.
max_commentsnumber- Max comments to return (default 300, max 500).
Example response
{ "post": { "title": "The new export flow is much slower", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/example/comments/abc123/" }, "comments": [ { "author": "another_user", "body": "Same here, started right after the update.", "score": 41, "replies": [] } ] }summarize_feedbackSummarize sentiment and themes from a query or from posts you already fetched.
querystring- Search and summarize. Provide this or posts.
postsobject[]- Posts from search_threads to summarize.
focusstring- What to focus on, e.g. a feature name.
Example response
{ "summary": "Mostly negative on export speed; positive on the new dashboard.", "themes": [ { "label": "Slow exports", "sentiment": "negative", "sources": [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/example/comments/abc123/" ] } ] }run_researchRun a full Reddinbox research strategy on a topic: keyword and community selection, multi-platform search, filtering.
topicstringrequired- Topic to research.
Example response
{ "strategy": { "keywords": [ "export slow" ], "communities": [ "r/example" ] }, "posts": [] }
Install
Connect your client
The same endpoint serves every platform. Pick your client.
claude mcp add --transport http reddinbox https://reddinbox.com/api/mcp \
--header "Authorization: Bearer rdb_your_api_key"Replace the placeholder with your key. Full Claude Code setup and troubleshooting
Know before you start
Limits
- Read-only access to public stories and comments.
- Comment trees on very large threads can be long. Ask the model to focus on a theme to keep token use down.
Frequently asked questions
Related pages
Try the Hacker News MCP server
Create a key, paste the config and ask your first question.
Free trial. No credit card required.