Hacker News Companion MCP server for AI agents

The Hacker News Companion MCP server processes Hacker News discussions, preparing them in a structured format that Claude can use to generate high-quality summaries. It handles the hierarchical structure of comments and their metadata to help Claude understand the relative importance and relationships within discussions.

Installation Options

Installing via Smithery

The easiest way to install the Hacker News Companion MCP is through Smithery:

npx -y @smithery/cli install @georgeck/hn-companion-mcp --client claude

Manual Installation

If you prefer to install manually:

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/hn-companion-mcp.git
cd hn-companion-mcp

Install dependencies:
```
npm install
```

Using the MCP Server

Command Line Interface

You can use the MCP directly from the command line by providing either a Hacker News post ID or URL:

node index.js <post-id-or-url>

Examples:

# Using a post ID
node index.js 43448075

# Using a full URL
node index.js https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43448075

Running as an API Server

To start the server:

npm start

Once running, you can make requests to the API:

curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/api/summarize \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"input": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43448075"}'

API Reference

POST /api/summarize

This endpoint accepts a Hacker News URL or post ID and returns formatted data for summarization.

Request format:

{
  "input": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43448075"
}

Response format:

{
  "status": "success",
  "data": {
    "systemPrompt": "...",
    "userPrompt": "...",
    "commentPathIdMapping": { ... },
    "postTitle": "...",
    "postId": "...",
    "commentCount": 123
  }
}

Integration with Claude

The MCP server can be configured to work with Claude. When a user asks Claude to summarize a Hacker News discussion, Claude can call this MCP to fetch and format the data before generating a summary.

Configuration example:

"hn-companion": {
  "command": "node",
  "args": ["<full path to src>/hn-companion-mcp/server.js"]
}

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "hn-companion" '{"command":"node","args":["<full path to src>/hn-companion-mcp/server.js"]}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "hn-companion": {
            "command": "node",
            "args": [
                "<full path to src>/hn-companion-mcp/server.js"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "hn-companion": {
            "command": "node",
            "args": [
                "<full path to src>/hn-companion-mcp/server.js"
            ]
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect