Hacker News API for AI agents
Official Hacker News items, users, story feeds and updates in the UnifAPI envelope — free to call at a 0x credit multiplier.
Use Hacker News records as evidence, not glue code.
UnifAPI keeps the public Hacker News surface discoverable through MCP and callable over HTTP. Agents can inspect the schema, fetch only the records needed for the task, and return the result with request, pagination, and billing metadata intact.
Fetch public Hacker News records when an agent needs source evidence instead of generic web text.
Use the same operation contracts through MCP for exploratory Skills and through HTTP for production integrations.
Combine this platform with the rest of UnifAPI's catalog without changing response envelopes or billing logic.
Agents & Skills that use the Hacker News API
You rarely call an API by hand. These prebuilt agents and skills already read Hacker News records inside Claude or Codex — start from one of them, or call the endpoints below yourself.
6 ready-to-call endpoints
Get Hacker News item by ID
Fetch a single Hacker News item. Stories, comments, jobs, polls, and poll options share the same item shape.
Get largest Hacker News item ID
Return the ID of the most recently created Hacker News item. Useful as an upper bound for walking the full item range or detecting new activity since a previous poll.
List Hacker News story IDs
List Hacker News story ids from a named feed. Use `/hacker-news/items/{id}` to fetch item details.
List Hacker News story items
Fetch item details from a named Hacker News story feed in one operation. Use this when an agent needs readable story titles, URLs, scores, authors, or comment counts.
Get changed Hacker News items and profiles
Return the IDs of recently changed Hacker News items and user profiles. Useful for incrementally syncing only what changed since the last poll instead of re-fetching everything.
Get Hacker News user by ID
Return a public Hacker News user profile by case-sensitive username, including karma, account creation date, and the about text. Useful for attributing stories and comments and profiling contributors.