How to Use the Hacker News MCP in Claude Code

Connect Claude Code to Hacker News for terminal-based research. Automate your news monitoring via CLI.

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Connect Hacker News MCP to Claude Code

Create your Vinkius account to connect Hacker News to Claude Code and route execution through our secure gateway. The platform manages server hosting, runtime updates, and security layers. Configuration requires no manual server provisioning.

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Setup Hacker News with Claude Code

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Get Hacker News top stories in Claude Code

Use `top_stories` to pipe the latest headlines into your terminal. It returns an array of IDs ready for your shell scripts to process. This is ideal for automated monitoring. You can pipe the output into other CLI tools or save it to a local logs file.

Monitor new submissions via MCP Server

The `new_stories` tool keeps your terminal updated with fresh content. It provides the metadata needed to track emerging tech trends. You can call this from a cron job. It gives you a clean list of IDs to feed into your analysis pipeline.

Retrieve item details in your terminal

The `get_item` tool fetches specific stories or comments by ID. It outputs clean Markdown that you can view directly in your shell. It handles the heavy lifting of parsing nested comment structures. You get the text output immediately without any browser overhead.

Setup guide

Set up Hacker News MCP in Claude Code

Prerequisites

Claude Code CLI installed (npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code)
Active Vinkius subscription with a valid endpoint token

1

Run the add command

Open your terminal and run the command shown on the right. Replace [YOUR_TOKEN_HERE] with your endpoint token from cloud.vinkius.com. Use --scope user to make it available across all projects.
2

Verify the connection

Start a Claude Code session and type /mcp to list connected servers. You should see hacker-news-mcp with a green status indicator.
3

Start using tools

Ask Claude Code something like "Check my latest Hacker News transactions." It will automatically discover and invoke the available Hacker News tools.

Terminal

claude mcp add --transport http hacker-news-mcp https://edge.vinkius.com/[YOUR_TOKEN_HERE]/mcp

Get your connection token →

Prerequisites

Claude Code CLI installed
Active Vinkius subscription with a valid endpoint token

1

Open the config file

Create or edit .mcp.json in your project root for project-level scope, or ~/.claude.json for user-level scope.
2

Add the Hacker News MCP

Paste the JSON snippet shown on the right into the mcpServers object. Replace [YOUR_TOKEN_HERE] with your endpoint token from cloud.vinkius.com.
3

Restart Claude Code

Start a new Claude Code session. Type /mcp to confirm the server is connected. The tools will be automatically available in your conversation.

.mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hacker-news-mcp": {
      "type": "url",
      "url": "https://edge.vinkius.com/[YOUR_TOKEN_HERE]/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Get your connection token →

Independent Platform Disclaimer: Vinkius is an independent platform and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, verified by, or otherwise authorized by Hacker News. All third-party trademarks, logos, and brand names are the property of their respective owners. Their use on this website is strictly for informational purposes to identify service compatibility and interoperability.

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Common questions about Hacker News MCP in Claude Code

Use the command line to add the server with the required transport flag. Run the add command in your terminal and verify the connection with the list command.

The server performs temporary, stateless reads. No story metadata or comment content is stored on our infrastructure.

Yes. Because it is a terminal-based agent, you can write scripts that call these tools at specific intervals to monitor for new posts.

It supports execution in headless environments. You can include it in your CI workflows to pull data for automated documentation updates.

We rely on the official public API. The server only retrieves public story IDs and comments, keeping your terminal environment isolated from external trackers.

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