Hacker News Data Skill

The deterministic read path for public Hacker News data through UnifAPI. This is a Data Skill: it does not run a marketing job on its own — it names the concrete hacker-news/... operations, response shapes, and gotchas so any launch-reception or listening workflow for dev/infra/startup categories reads from one known recipe instead of rediscovering the surface each time.

Read-only — eyes, not hands. It researches public HN data and returns cited records; it never posts stories or comments, and UnifAPI never holds HN credentials.

Use the unifapi skill for live evidence

Connect once through the shared unifapi skill (OAuth MCP), then call the operations below. Story feeds take a {feed} of top, new, best, ask, show, or jobs. Keep any billing metadata so the output can state record cost.

Response contract

Single-entity endpoints return the object in data:

{
  "request_id": "unif_...",
  "data": {},
  "billing": { "records_charged": 1, "balance_remaining": 99 }
}

List endpoints return an array in data plus pagination:

{
  "request_id": "unif_...",
  "data": [],
  "pagination": { "has_more": false, "next_cursor": null },
  "billing": { "records_charged": 1 }
}

When pagination.has_more is true, pass pagination.next_cursor as the next request's cursor (limit sets page size). Always preserve billing.

Core operations

{feed} ∈ top · new · best · ask · show · jobs.

Need a field not listed here? Use the unifapi skill's get_operation to read the exact schema before calling — but pick the operation from this table, don't discover blind.

Workflow

The deterministic recipes. Pick the one that matches the job; each names exactly what to call.

1. Frame the watch. Pick the feeds: show and ask for launches and questions, top and best for what's landing, new for the freshest.
2. Scan a feed. Call hacker-news/stories/{feed}/items (hydrated items in one call — cheaper than ids-then-fetch) and match stories by title or url to your product or category. Page via next_cursor.
3. Read the thread. On a matching item, read score (points) and descendants (comment count), then walk the kids ids with hacker-news/items/{id} to read the candid critique in the comment tree.
4. Weight a critic. Call hacker-news/users/{id} for karma and submitted to judge how much a commenter's take carries.
5. Watch for change. Call hacker-news/updates for recently changed items and profiles, or hacker-news/max-item to bound a fresh scan.
6. Cite everything. Every figure ties back to the HN item it came from; report billing.records_charged (or estimate when billing metadata is absent).

Shape notes

• HackerNewsItem — type (story · comment · job · poll · pollopt), by, time, title, url, text, score (points), descendants (comment count), kids (child comment ids, not objects), parent.
• HackerNewsUser — id, created, karma, about, submitted (item ids).
• HackerNewsUpdates — items and profiles that recently changed.

Gotchas

• No keyword search. Discovery is feed-driven — scan top/new/best/ask/show/ jobs and match by title/url. Say so in the brief.
• kids are child comment ids, not embedded objects — recurse with hacker-news/items/{id} to read the comment tree.
• descendants is the comment count and score is the points — don't confuse them.
• Prefer hacker-news/stories/{feed}/items over hacker-news/stories/{feed} when you want the hydrated stories, not a list of ids.
• A low balance can silently truncate list pages: check billing.truncated_due_to_balance — when true the page is partial.

Output

Return the records the calling workflow needs, each cited to its HN item, plus a one-line cost note (records_charged). When this skill is used directly, a compact reception brief is the default:

**{Story title}** ({feed}) — {score} points, {descendants} comments. Landed: {yes/no}. Candid takes: "{quote}" (by {user}, {karma} karma). Evidence: {item URLs}. Records: ~{N}.

Related skills

• competitor-launch-monitor (Competitive Intelligence), social-listening-brief (Social Listening) — launch-reception and listening work on top of this read path.
• unifapi — the shared data skill: connect MCP and look up exact schemas with get_operation.