Hacker News Search Scraper Stories, Comments, Show HN, Ask HN

Web & SEO Tools

Operated by Sourcelane✓ verified

Search-focused scraper for Hacker News that performs keyword- and attribute-based queries across stories, comments, Show HN, Ask HN, polls, jobs and front-page items. It supports filtering by author, date range, minimum points and minimum comment counts, and offers relevance or date sorting. Technically, the connector queries HN search, handles pagination with a resumable cursor, and returns structured records containing identifiers and content type, titles and target URLs, author metadata, engagement metrics (points and comment counts), full post or comment text, parent-thread linkage for comments (parent story identifiers, titles and URLs) for thread reconstruction, created timestamps (ISO and Unix), HN permalinks, and tag lists. Outputs are suitable for building searchable corpora or analytic results focused on full text and engagement signals.

Verified Sep 28, 12:10 AM

$0.001

per item

Up to 100 per call. Only pay for results returned; failed calls are refunded.

What people use it for

Monitoring: track every Hacker News post that mentions a product, brand, or competitor
Market signal detection: identify rising tools, libraries, or trends before front-page visibility
Author research: collect all Show HN, Ask HN posts or comments from a specific user
Topic results creation: build a corpus of HN discussions on a niche topic for analysis or LLM fine-tuning
Lead generation: find founders posting about problems relevant to a product or service

Trust & reliability

7d uptime trend

Window	Uptime	Success rate	p50	p95
24h	—	—	—	—
7d	—	—	—	—
30d	—	—	—	—

Calling contract

Call it through Sourcelane's gateway or MCP server. We run the connector, apply your agent's spend guardrails, and bill only the results returned.

Call it via Sourcelane

curl -X POST https://cool-puffin-608.convex.site/v1/call \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sl_live_your_agent_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"listing":"hn-search-scraper","params":{"query":"openai","maxItems":5},"maxResults":10}'

Request params

Field	Type	Required	Description
`query`	string	optional	Keyword(s) to search across titles, URLs, story text, and comment text. Leave empty to fetch the most recent items in the chosen tag.
`tag`	string	optional	Restrict results to a single item type. 'Front Page Stories' = stories that have appeared on the HN front page.
`author`	string	optional	Optional. HN username to restrict results to (case-sensitive). Leave empty to search all authors.
`sortBy`	string	optional	Relevance favors highly-upvoted matches; Date returns the most recent items first.
`dateAfter`	string	optional	Optional. Only return items created on or after this UTC date.
`dateBefore`	string	optional	Optional. Only return items created on or before this UTC date.
`minPoints`	integer	optional	Only return stories with at least this many points. Ignored for comments.
`minComments`	integer	optional	Only return stories with at least this many comments. Ignored for comments.
`maxItems`	integer	optional	Maximum results to return. 0 = no cap. Algolia caps relevance results at ~1000; date sort can return more. Capped at 100 per call.
`pageId`	string	optional	Optional. Paste the NEXT_PAGE_ID from a previous run's Key-value store to resume from where you left off.

Each result contains

Field	Type	Description
`objectID`	string	Object ID
`type`	string	Type
`title`	string	Title
`url`	string	Url
`author`	string	Author
`points`	integer	Points
`numComments`	integer	Num Comments
`storyText`	null	Story Text
`commentText`	null	Comment Text
`storyId`	integer	Story Id
`storyTitle`	null	Story Title
`storyUrl`	null	Story Url
`parentId`	null	—
`createdAt`	string	—
`createdAtUnix`	integer	—
`hnUrl`	string	—
`tags`	array	—

Use Hacker News Search Scraper Stories, Comments, Show HN, Ask HN from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor

Pick your tool and connect in under a minute. Then just ask — for example: “For these 50 domains, find contact emails and what e-commerce platform they run on.”

Connect Claude

Web, desktop and mobile. Paste one URL.

1Copy your personal connector URL
2In Claude open Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector
3Paste the URL and click Add — done

Manual setup (config files, REST, Python) +

Claude Code

Adds the Sourcelane MCP server with your key as a header.

terminal

claude mcp add --transport http sourcelane https://cool-puffin-608.convex.site/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer sl_live_your_agent_key"

Claude Desktop (config file)

Alternative to the connector URL: add to claude_desktop_config.json, then restart Claude.

claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sourcelane": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://cool-puffin-608.convex.site/mcp",
        "--header",
        "Authorization:${AUTH_HEADER}"
      ],
      "env": {
        "AUTH_HEADER": "Bearer sl_live_your_agent_key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor & Windsurf

Add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json (or Windsurf's mcp_config.json).

mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sourcelane": {
      "url": "https://cool-puffin-608.convex.site/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer sl_live_your_agent_key"
      }
    }
  }
}

VS Code

Save as .vscode/mcp.json. VS Code prompts for your key once.

.vscode/mcp.json

{
  "servers": {
    "sourcelane": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://cool-puffin-608.convex.site/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ${input:sourcelane-key}"
      }
    }
  },
  "inputs": [
    {
      "type": "promptString",
      "id": "sourcelane-key",
      "description": "Sourcelane agent key",
      "password": true
    }
  ]
}

ChatGPT Custom GPT (Actions)

Create a GPT → Actions → Import from URL, then Authentication: API Key, Bearer.

OpenAPI schema URL

https://sourcelane-amber.vercel.app/openapi.json

REST

One POST. Pass maxResults to cap cost.

curl

curl -X POST https://cool-puffin-608.convex.site/v1/call \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sl_live_your_agent_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"listing":"hn-search-scraper","params":{"query":"openai","maxItems":5},"maxResults":10}'

Python, LangChain, CrewAI, OpenAI Agents SDK…

Wrap the REST call as a tool, or point an MCP client at the endpoint.

python

import requests

res = requests.post(
    "https://cool-puffin-608.convex.site/v1/call",
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer sl_live_your_agent_key"},
    json={
        "listing": "hn-search-scraper",
        "params": {"query":"openai","maxItems":5},
        "maxResults": 10,
    },
    timeout=300,
)
body = res.json()
print(body["receipt"]["chargedMicros"], "micro-USD for", body["receipt"]["results"], "results")
print(body["data"])

Reviews

—

0 reviews

Leave a review

Loading reviews…