unofficial-HackerNews-MCP-CLI

An unofficial HackerNews MCP server and CLI. Reads the top, new, best, Ask, Show, and job story lists, individual items, threaded comments, and user profiles through one shared async client. Built with FastMCP and Typer.

Install • CLI • MCP server • Skill • Contributing

This project wraps the official HackerNews API behind a single shared async client and exposes it two ways:

• hn, a Typer command-line client with Rich-formatted output.
• hn-mcp, a FastMCP server that exposes the same operations as MCP tools for Claude and other MCP clients.

The API is read-only, needs no authentication, and has no rate limit.

Install

Requires Python 3.10+ and uv.

uv sync                    # create the venv and install
uv run hn top              # run the CLI without installing scripts
# or install the console scripts (hn, hn-mcp) into the environment:
uv pip install -e .

CLI

hn top                 # front-page (top) stories
hn top --limit 10      # -n 10
hn new                 # newest stories
hn best                # best recent stories
hn ask                 # latest Ask HN
hn show                # latest Show HN
hn jobs                # latest job postings

hn item 8863           # a single story/comment/job/poll
hn comments 8863       # threaded comment tree (--depth, --limit)
hn user pg             # a user's profile (case-sensitive name)

hn max-item            # id of the most recently created item
hn updates             # recently changed items and profiles

Add --json to any command to get raw JSON instead of a table, which is handy for scripting:

hn top -n 5 --json | jq -r '.[] | "\(.title) (\(.url // .hn_url))"'
hn user pg --json | jq .karma

Run hn --help for the full command list.

MCP server

Run over stdio, which is the transport MCP clients use by default:

hn-mcp

Or over HTTP:

hn-mcp --http --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000

Register it with an MCP client such as Claude Desktop or Claude Code:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hackernews": { "command": "hn-mcp" }
  }
}

Tools

Tool	Description
get_stories(category, limit)	A list of stories; category is one of top, new, best, ask, show, job
get_item(item_id)	A single story, comment, job, or poll
get_comments(item_id, max_depth, max_per_level)	Threaded comment tree
get_user(username)	A user's public profile
get_max_item_id()	Id of the most recently created item
get_updates()	Items and profiles that changed most recently

Skill

skills/hackernews/SKILL.md is an agent skill that teaches Claude how and when to use the hn CLI and MCP server.

Project layout

src/hn/
  client.py   # shared async HackerNews API client (httpx)
  models.py   # Pydantic models for items and users
  server.py   # FastMCP server (hn-mcp)
  cli.py      # Typer CLI (hn)
skills/hackernews/SKILL.md
tests/        # pytest + respx (mocked API)

Development

uv run ruff check .          # lint
uv run ruff format --check . # formatting
uv run pytest                # test suite (API calls are mocked)

CI runs lint, formatting, and the test suite on Python 3.10 through 3.13 via GitHub Actions. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full workflow.

License

MIT. See LICENSE. This is an unofficial project and is not affiliated with Hacker News or Y Combinator.