The Hacker News MCP serverthat catches threads before they peak
Octolens monitors Hacker News posts and comments for your keywords, scores every match with AI, and serves the signal to Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor over MCP. HN's APIs are free — the monitoring layer is what you're missing.
5-minute setup • OAuth sign-in, read-only • MCP on every planAsk HN: What do you use to know when your product gets mentioned online? Current setup is grep + hope.
Post · 87 points · 64 comments · rising
Comment: “We evaluated the category last quarter — the API-first one was the only tool our agents could actually consume.”
Comment · top reply on a Show HN · 1h ago
Trusted by brands people talk about online
HN's APIs Are Free. Monitoring Isn't Built In.
Hacker News can send you 10,000 visitors or a reputation problem before lunch. Both are easier to handle if you're there in the first hour.
The APIs answer queries, not questions
The official Firebase API serves items by ID with no search at all; Algolia's HN Search adds keyword queries. Neither pushes anything to you — no alerts, no webhooks, no filtering. Monitoring means running your own poller, forever.
Threads peak in hours
The front page turns over fast, and a thread's tone is usually set by its first dozen comments. A mention you find tomorrow morning is a conversation that already happened without you.
Comments carry the verdicts
The throwaway praise, the detailed teardown, the “we switched because…” story — they land in comment threads on other people's posts, where nothing notifies you and search-by-keyword is the only way in.
Octolens watches HN continuously — posts and comments — scores every match with AI, and your assistant gets the mentions while the thread is still live. The same pipeline can page Slack the moment something spikes.
From Front Page to Answer in Your AI Tool
One pipeline: Octolens does the collection and filtering, MCP does the delivery. You just ask.
Add keywords
Your brand, competitors, and the category phrases HN uses — plus negative keywords for name collisions.
octolens.com → KeywordsOctolens collects
Posts and comments matching your keywords, with a 7-day backfill per keyword and continuous collection after. Hourly refresh on Pro, real-time on Scale.
posts + commentsAI scores everything
Every mention arrives scored for relevance and sentiment, tagged with labels like buy_intent, competitor_mention, or complaint.
"relevanceScore": "high"Your assistant queries it
23 MCP tools: list and search mentions, run analytics, manage keywords and feeds — from Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor.
list_relevant_mentionsFull tool reference in the MCP docs. The same data is available over the REST API and webhooks — on every plan. Prefer alerts and a feed over an AI assistant? See Hacker News monitoring.
Connected in Five Minutes
No HN account needed at any step. You need an Octolens account (7-day free trial) and an MCP-compatible tool.
Add your keywords in Octolens
Brand, competitors, category terms. HN collection (posts + comments) starts with a 7-day backfill.
Connect your client
One URL for every tool. Authentication is a browser sign-in to your Octolens account — there's no API key or token to paste.
Ask
Try: “show hacker news mentions from today” — you should see your first scored mentions come back.
claude mcp add --transport http octolens \
"https://app.octolens.com/api/mcp/v2"
# then, inside Claude Code:
/mcp # → octolens → AuthenticateRun the command, then run /mcp inside Claude Code, select octolens → Authenticate, and sign in when the browser opens.
Verify it works
@octolens show hacker news mentions from todayNew keywords can take up to 24 hours to index fully — check mentions in the Octolens dashboard first if nothing comes back.
What You'll Actually Ask It
Copy-paste these into Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor once you're connected.
7-day free trial · No credit card required
MCP Is One Door Into the Same Data
Octolens is the data layer for what people say online. Your assistant queries it over MCP — your team and your agents can consume it everywhere else too.
Webhooks → your stack
Push instead of poll: scored Hacker News mentions delivered to Slack or your own endpoint as they're found. Wire buying-intent posts straight into your CRM.
Explore webhooks →Agent skills
Ready-made playbooks agents can run over the MCP server — mentions to Linear issues, churn signals to CS, public conversations to pipeline.
Browse agent skills →API → your product
The same Hacker News data over one REST endpoint with one schema across 15+ sources. Build monitoring into your own product or internal tools.
Build with Octolens →Your Three Options for HN via MCP
Access to HN data is free for everyone. The differences are all in what happens after the fetch.
| Octolens MCP | DIY Algolia/Firebase MCP | Refreshing /newest yourself | |
|---|---|---|---|
| API access | Handled for you | Free — genuinely | — |
| Alerts & continuous watching | Yes — plus Slack & webhooks | You build and babysit the poller | You are the poller |
| Comment coverage | Posts + comments, keyword-matched | Query-by-query | Whatever you happen to read |
| AI relevance & sentiment scoring | Built-in | You build it | Your eyeballs |
| Catch threads while rising | Yes | Depends on your poll interval | Only by luck |
| Historical data & trends | Yes | Only what you've stored | No |
| Other platforms via the same server | 15+ sources | HN only | — |
| Cost | $199/mo ($159/mo annual) | Free API + your engineering time | Free + constant vigilance |
Building on the free HN APIs is a fine weekend project — until the weekend ends and the poller still needs to run, filter, and page someone. If HN moments matter to your company, monitor it properly.
Hacker News MCP Server & Monitoring, Answered
Setup, coverage, and HN-specifics — everything about monitoring Hacker News from Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor.
Because the API is the easy 10%. The official Firebase API has no search; Algolia adds queries but nothing watches, filters, dedupes, scores, or alerts. Octolens runs that monitoring layer continuously and serves your assistant only the mentions worth acting on — alongside 15+ other platforms in the same server.
Posts and comments. Comment coverage matters most on HN: detailed verdicts and switching stories usually appear as replies deep in threads on other people's posts, where nothing notifies you.
Yes — on Scale, collection is real-time, and you can pair the MCP server with Slack alerts or webhooks so a rising mention pages you rather than waiting to be asked. The first hour of an HN thread is when a reply still shapes it.
Not for monitoring — Octolens needs nothing from you but keywords. You'll want your own HN account for replying, which stays a human job: MCP access is read-only, and HN culture is unforgiving of automated posting.
Depends on your plan: hourly refresh on Pro ($199/mo, or $159/mo billed annually), real-time on Scale ($599/mo, or $499/mo billed annually). For HN specifically, real-time is worth it if front-page moments are realistic for your brand.
Yes. Add competitor names as keywords — their Show HN launches, their outage threads, and the comment sections comparing you both surface automatically.
Claude Code, Claude Desktop and Web, ChatGPT, Cursor, and any other MCP-compatible client. It's one remote server URL with OAuth sign-in — there's no API key to manage and nothing to run locally.
Every new keyword gets a 7-day backfill, then collects continuously — your archive builds from the day you add a keyword. That's enough history for trends, sentiment shifts, and share-of-voice over time.
Give your AI tools ears on Hacker News
Add your keywords, connect the MCP server, and ask your assistant what HN is saying about you — all inside the 7-day free trial.
No credit card required · API access on all plans · Cancel anytime