# Hacker News AI integration on Definable

> Hacker News is a tech-focused news aggregator by Y Combinator, featuring user-submitted stories and discussions on startups, programming, and emerging trends

## What this connects

Hacker News is a tech-focused news aggregator by Y Combinator, featuring user-submitted stories and discussions on startups, programming, and emerging trends

Vendor: https://news.ycombinator.com/

## Tools available

**14** tools available. First 12:

- `HACKERNEWS_GET_ASK_STORIES` — Get Ask HN Story IDs — Get up to 200 latest Ask HN story IDs from Hacker News. Returns an array of item IDs for Ask HN posts in ranked order.
- `HACKERNEWS_GET_BEST_STORIES` — Get Best HackerNews Stories — Get up to 500 best story IDs from HackerNews ranked by score. Returns story IDs only. Use the returned IDs with get_item_with_id action to fetch full story details.
- `HACKERNEWS_GET_ITEM` — Get Hacker News Item — Tool to get a Hacker News item by its unique ID from the Firebase API. Use when you need to retrieve details about a specific story, comment, job, poll, or pollopt.
- `HACKERNEWS_GET_ITEM_WITH_ID` — Get Hackernews Item — Get a specific item from Hacker News using its ID. Limits response size to prevent context overflow.
- `HACKERNEWS_GET_JOB_STORIES` — Get Job Story IDs — Get up to 200 latest job story IDs from Hacker News. Returns an array of item IDs for job postings that can be used to fetch full job details.
- `HACKERNEWS_GET_LATEST_POSTS` — Get Latest Hackernews Posts — Get the latest posts from Hacker News based on optional filters. Results can be limited using the size parameter.
- `HACKERNEWS_GET_MAX_ITEM_ID` — Get Max Item ID — Tool to get the current largest item ID from Hacker News. Use when you need to discover the most recent items or iterate through all items in the system by walking backward from this ID.
- `HACKERNEWS_GET_NEW_STORIES` — Get New Hacker News Stories — Get up to 500 newest story IDs from Hacker News. Returns an array of item IDs sorted by recency (most recent first). Use these IDs with the Get Item action to retrieve full story details.
- `HACKERNEWS_GET_SHOW_STORIES` — Get Show HN Stories — Tool to retrieve up to 200 latest Show HN story IDs from Hacker News. Use when you need to find recent Show HN posts where people share their projects, products, or creations.
- `HACKERNEWS_GET_TOP_STORIES` — Get Top HackerNews Stories — Get up to 500 top story IDs from HackerNews including jobs. Returns story IDs sorted by front page position. Use the returned IDs with get_item_with_id action to fetch full story details.
- `HACKERNEWS_GET_UPDATES` — Get Hacker News Updates — Get recently changed items and user profiles from Hacker News. Use this to monitor recent activity or updates on the platform.
- `HACKERNEWS_GET_USER` — Get Hacker News User — Retrieve a Hacker News user's public profile by their username. Returns the user's username, karma score, and optional bio/about text. Use this to look up information about HN community members.

## Auth

No auth required.

## How agents use Hacker News

Inside a Definable workflow, Hacker News is one of the tools the **Distributor specialist** can call. Example coordination patterns:

- **Researcher → Hacker News** — the Researcher (GPT-5.5) pulls context from Hacker News (records, threads, documents), synthesises findings, and briefs the rest of the team.
- **Writer → Distributor → Hacker News** — the Writer (Claude Opus 4.7) drafts copy in brand voice, the Verifier passes it, then the Distributor writes the result into Hacker News (create record, post message, draft email).
- **Designer / Engineer → Distributor → Hacker News** — the Designer ships an asset or the Engineer ships a code change, the Distributor delivers it via Hacker News (attach file, open PR comment, post status).

The Verifier checks every Hacker News call. On rate limit, schema drift, or auth refresh it self-heals and retries — the workflow completes without manual intervention.

## Categories

- news & lifestyle — https://definable.ai/apps/category/news-&-lifestyle/

## Related

- HTML page: https://definable.ai/apps/hackernews/
- Same category (news & lifestyle): https://definable.ai/apps/category/news-&-lifestyle/
- All integrations: https://definable.ai/apps/
- Workflow (multi-agent loop): https://definable.ai/workflow/
- Apps llms.txt index: https://definable.ai/llms-apps.txt