Hacker News Firebaseio Hacker News API
★ Only Publicly Available OpenAPI DocumentSocial MediaSocial Listeningnone10 EndpointsREST
For Agents
Pull Hacker News stories, comments, user profiles, and live ranked feeds (top, new, best, Ask HN, Show HN, jobs) without authentication.
Use for: Get the top 30 Hacker News stories right now, Retrieve the comments tree for story id 8863, Look up the Hacker News profile for user 'pg', List the current Ask HN questions on the front page
Not supported: Does not support posting, voting, commenting, or any write operations - use for read-only access to Hacker News stories, comments, users, and live feeds only.
The official Hacker News API is hosted on Firebase and provides read-only access to all public Hacker News data. Agents can fetch any item (story, comment, job, poll, or poll option) by id, look up user profiles, and pull live ranked feeds for top, new, best, Ask HN, Show HN, and job stories. The API returns JSON over HTTPS and requires no authentication. It is ideal for trend monitoring, citation lookup, and community sentiment analysis.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the Hacker News API to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Hacker News API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
1
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
Capabilities
What an agent can do with Hacker News API.
Fetch a single Hacker News item by id and read its title, url, score, and kids
Retrieve a user profile with karma, submitted ids, and account creation time
List the current top, new, and best story ids in ranked order
Pull the latest Ask HN and Show HN story ids for community Q&A and launches
Fetch the latest job listing ids for hiring monitoring
Watch the maxitem id and updates feed to detect newly created or changed items
Use Cases
Patterns agents use Hacker News API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Trend and Sentiment Monitor
Watch the Hacker News top and new feeds for stories matching a brand, product, or technology and surface a digest with comment sentiment. The agent polls /topstories.json and /newstories.json, fetches each item via /item/{itemId}.json, and walks the kids array to read the comment thread. Useful for PR teams, founders monitoring launch reception, and competitive intelligence.
Fetch /topstories.json, retrieve each of the top 30 stories via /item/{itemId}.json, and return any whose title or url contains the keyword 'jentic'.
Show HN Launch Tracker
Build a feed of new Show HN posts in your category and notify the team when a competing launch appears. The agent pulls /showstories.json, fetches each item, filters by keyword or domain, and posts matches to a chat channel. Setup is straightforward because the API requires no authentication.
Pull /showstories.json, fetch the first 50 items, and report any whose url matches a list of competitor domains.
Hiring Pipeline Watcher
Scrape Hacker News 'Who is hiring?' threads and the dedicated jobs feed to surface roles relevant to a candidate's profile. The agent fetches /jobstories.json, walks the items, and uses keyword matching against role descriptions. Recruiters use this pattern to source from a high-signal community without paying for a job board.
Fetch /jobstories.json, retrieve each item, and return roles whose text contains 'remote' and 'rust'.
Citation and Discussion Lookup
When a research agent encounters a URL, look up whether it has been discussed on Hacker News and surface the top comment thread. The agent searches by item id (from a third-party index) and pulls the discussion via /item/{itemId}.json. Useful for AI research assistants and content curation tools.
Given an item id 8863, GET /item/8863.json and return the title, score, and the first three top-level comment texts by walking the kids array.
Agent Discovery Through Jentic
AI agents discover Hacker News operations by searching Jentic with intents like 'list top hacker news stories' and receive the matching operation with its input schema. The agent invokes the call through Jentic without writing custom HTTP code. Because the API is unauthenticated, no vault entry is needed.
Use Jentic search 'list top hacker news stories' to find the GET /topstories.json operation and execute it to receive the top 500 ranked story ids.
Key Endpoints
10 endpoints — the official hacker news api is hosted on firebase and provides read-only access to all public hacker news data.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
GET
/item/{itemId}.json
Fetch any item by id
GET
/user/{username}.json
Fetch a user profile
GET
/topstories.json
List the current top story ids
GET
/newstories.json
List the newest story ids
GET
/askstories.json
List the latest Ask HN ids
GET
/showstories.json
List the latest Show HN ids
GET
/jobstories.json
List the latest job ids
GET
/maxitem.json
Get the maximum item id currently posted
GET
/item/{itemId}.json
Fetch any item by id
GET
/user/{username}.json
Fetch a user profile
GET
/topstories.json
List the current top story ids
GET
/newstories.json
List the newest story ids
GET
/askstories.json
List the latest Ask HN ids
GET
/showstories.json
List the latest Show HN ids
GET
/jobstories.json
List the latest job ids
GET
/maxitem.json
Get the maximum item id currently posted
Why Jentic?
Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.
Credential isolation
The Hacker News API is unauthenticated, so no credentials are stored. Jentic forwards requests directly without injecting any keys, simplifying the agent's tool surface.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic for intents like 'list top hacker news stories' or 'fetch a hacker news item' and receive the matching operation with input schema. No URL building required.
Time to first call
Direct integration: under an hour because the API is small and unauthenticated. Through Jentic: under five minutes - search, load, execute.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
FAQs
Specific to using Hacker News API through Jentic.
What authentication does the Hacker News API use?
None. The Hacker News Firebase API is fully public and read-only, so no API key, OAuth token, or signed request is needed. Agents can call any endpoint anonymously, which means no credential setup is required in Jentic.
How do I fetch a single Hacker News story and its comments?
GET /item/{itemId}.json returns the story object with its title, url, score, and a kids array of child comment ids. To build the full thread, fetch each id in kids recursively. There are no batch endpoints, so plan to make one request per node.
What live feeds does the Hacker News API provide?
The API exposes /topstories.json, /newstories.json, /beststories.json, /askstories.json, /showstories.json, and /jobstories.json. Each returns up to 500 item ids in ranked order. Combine with /item/{itemId}.json to hydrate the full story payloads.
Are there rate limits on the Hacker News API?
Hacker News does not publish formal rate limits, but sustained heavy polling will be throttled at the Firebase layer. For trend monitoring, poll the live feed endpoints every 30-60 seconds rather than continuously, and cache item payloads since they rarely change after a few hours.
How do I use the Hacker News API with AI agents through Jentic?
Run pip install jentic, then search 'list top hacker news stories' to find GET /topstories.json. Load the operation and execute. Because the API is unauthenticated, the only setup is signing up at https://app.jentic.com/sign-up to use the SDK.
Can I detect newly posted items in real time?
Yes. GET /maxitem.json returns the largest item id ever posted, and /updates.json returns recently changed items and profiles. Agents can poll maxitem and fetch any new ids since the last seen value to build a near-real-time stream.
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