Hacker News MCP server for AI agents

The Hacker News MCP Server provides tools for fetching and searching Hacker News content, including stories, comments, and user information through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). This server acts as a bridge between AI models and the Hacker News platform.

Available Tools

The MCP server offers four main tools:

get_stories - Retrieves stories by category (top, new, ask_hn, show_hn)
get_story_info - Fetches comments for a specific story
search_stories - Searches Hacker News stories by query
get_user_info - Retrieves information about a specific user

Installation

Using Smithery (Recommended)

The easiest way to install the Hacker News MCP Server is via Smithery:

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

Manual Configuration for Claude Desktop

To configure the MCP server manually for Claude Desktop:

Locate your Claude Desktop configuration file:
- macOS: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
- Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Add the following configuration to the file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-hn": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-hn"]
    }
  }
}

Usage Examples

Basic Queries

You can prompt Claude with natural language requests to use the Hacker News tools:

To get top stories:
```
Get the top stories of today
```

To get story details:

What are the details of the story today that talks about the future of AI?

To get user information:
```
What has the user `pg` been up to?
```

To search for stories:

What does Hacker News say about careers in AI?

Combined Tool Usage

You can also use the Hacker News MCP server alongside other MCP servers, like the puppeteer MCP server:

What are the top stories of today?

Can you use the puppeteer tool to read the article about AI and also use the Hacker News tool to view the comments and give me a summary of what the main comments are about the article?

This will cause Claude to:

Fetch top stories using the get_stories tool
Use puppeteer to read the article content
Use get_story_info to fetch the comments
Provide a summary of the article and comments

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 "mcp-hn" '{"command":"uvx","args":["mcp-hn"]}'

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": {
        "mcp-hn": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-hn"
            ]
        }
    }
}

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": {
        "mcp-hn": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-hn"
            ]
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect