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"Parameters
- idpathrequired
- Hacker News item id.
- The parameter for this Hacker News operation. Use the URL-visible slug or id described in the docs.
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.
- This operation has a zero-credit multiplier, so successful responses include zero-charge billing metadata.
- A not-found or invalid-input condition uses the unified UnifAPI error shape, so callers do not need special handling for each source platform.
Response status codes
Billing
This operation is free: it has a zero-credit multiplier and still returns billing metadata with zero credits charged.
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.
Fields in the data object
A successful Get Hacker News item by ID call returns one data object with these fields (12 of 15 shown — the docs list the full schema).
- idinteger
- deletedboolean
- typestring
- bystring
- timeinteger
- Unix epoch seconds
- textstring
- HTML text for comments, stories, polls, and jobs.
- deadboolean
- parentinteger
- pollinteger
- kidsinteger[]
- urlstring
- scoreinteger
Agents & Skills built on Hacker News
You rarely call Get Hacker News item by ID by hand. These prebuilt agents and skills already read Hacker News data inside Claude or Codex — start from one of them, or call this endpoint yourself.
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
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.