Hacker News Search

Search Hacker News stories and comments: title, link, points, author, comment count, date and text, by relevance or date.

Pay by wallet (x402) hacker-news-search

Example

Input

{
  "query": "deno 1.0",
  "limit": 3
}

Answer

{
  "sort": "relevance",
  "type": "story",
  "query": "deno",
  "results": [
    {
      "id": "23172483",
      "url": "https://deno.land/v1",
      "text": null,
      "type": "story",
      "title": "Deno 1.0",
      "author": 3803,
      "hn_url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23172483",
      "points": 2081,
      "story_id": 23172483,
      "created_at": "2020-05-13T22:18:14Z",
      "num_comments": 583
    }
  ],
  "returned": 1,
  "total_results": 34746
}

Inputs

Field	Type	Required	What it is
`sort`	string	No	relevance (default) or date
`type`	string	No	story (default), comment, or all
`limit`	integer	No	Results to return, 1-30. Default: 10
`query`	string	Yes	Search terms. At least 2 characters.
`since_days`	integer	No	Only items created within the last N days

Output fields

How reliably each field appears in a successful answer.

Field	Type	Appears
`type`	string	Always (present in every successful answer)
`query`	string	Always (present in every successful answer)
`results`	array	Always (present in every successful answer)
`returned`	number	Always (present in every successful answer)
`total_results`	number	Always (present in every successful answer)
`sort`	—	Always (present in every successful answer)

How to call it

The same tool through each route. MCP clients reach it through Strale’s server at https://api.strale.io/mcp; the call below is what the agent sends.

# Needs an API key. max_price_cents caps what this call may cost.
curl -X POST https://api.strale.io/v1/do \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $STRALE_API_KEY" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "capability_slug": "hacker-news-search",
    "inputs": {
      "query": "deno 1.0",
      "limit": 3
    },
    "max_price_cents": 2
  }'

{
  "tool": "strale_execute",
  "arguments": {
    "slug": "hacker-news-search",
    "inputs": {
      "query": "deno 1.0",
      "limit": 3
    },
    "max_price_cents": 2
  }
}

import { Strale } from "straleio";

const strale = new Strale({ apiKey: process.env.STRALE_API_KEY! });
const result = await strale.do({
  capability_slug: "hacker-news-search",
  inputs: {
    "query": "deno 1.0",
    "limit": 3
  },
  max_price_cents: 2,
});

import os
from straleio import Strale, DoRequest

strale = Strale(api_key=os.environ["STRALE_API_KEY"])
result = strale.do(DoRequest(
    capability_slug="hacker-news-search",
    inputs={
        "query": "deno 1.0",
        "limit": 3,
    },
    max_price_cents=2,
))

# No account. The first request answers 402 with the price in USDC;
# an x402 client pays it from your wallet and repeats the request.
curl -i -X POST https://api.strale.io/x402/v2/hacker-news-search \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "query": "deno 1.0",
    "limit": 3
  }'

Limitations

Comment and story text is truncated at 500 characters
Long self-posts and comments are clipped; the hn_url points at the full item.
What to do instead: Fetch hn_url with url-to-text for the complete thread.
Search index, not the live site
Algolia indexes items within minutes of posting, but points and comment counts can lag the live page.