Get Hacker News item by ID · Hacker News API
Fetch a single Hacker News item. Stories, comments, jobs, polls, and poll options share the same item shape.
curl https://api.unifapi.com/hacker-news/items/{id} \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $UNIFAPI_KEY"Path parameters
- id
- The public Hacker News identifier shown in the endpoint path. Use the URL-visible slug or platform id described in the docs for this operation.
This operation is part of the Hacker News API in the news category. It uses the same Bearer token, request tracing, error model, and billing envelope as every UnifAPI endpoint, so agents can switch between platforms without custom per-vendor glue code.
Use it when a workflow needs Hacker News public data but should still keep one API key, one account balance, and one predictable JSON contract across social, live public-data sources.
Common agent workflows
- Look up public Hacker News data for agents that need reliable open-web context.
- Give an AI agent a stable Hacker News data source without building a per-platform integration.
- Normalize Hacker News responses into the same UnifAPI envelope used across the catalog.
Unified envelope, platform-native fields
- Lookup responses return one canonical object in `data` with stable identifiers, source URLs where available, and platform-specific metadata normalized into predictable JSON.
- Successful responses include `request_id` for support/debugging and `billing` with credits charged, records charged, and remaining balance.
- A not-found or invalid-input condition uses the unified UnifAPI error shape, so callers do not need special handling for each source platform.
Billing
Every successful call costs at least one credit. List and search operations charge by billable records returned; single-object lookups charge one record when they succeed. Platform-caused failures can be refunded, and public responses include billing metadata with the credits charged and remaining workspace balance.
Errors and retries
Authentication, validation, rate-limit, not-found, and provider errors use the unified UnifAPI error format. Agents should log `request_id`, retry only retryable failures, and treat invalid API keys, disabled keys, and expired keys as the same public `unauthorized` error type.
More Hacker News operations
Combine endpoints from the same platform, then join the results with other UnifAPI categories without changing authentication or response parsing.
Get largest Hacker News item ID
Returns the current largest Hacker News item id.
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
Returns recently changed Hacker News item ids and user profile ids.