# Hacker News Item Summarizer

> Hacker News Item Summarizer is a paid API for AI agents from hacker-news.x402tookit.com, paid per call via x402, $0.02/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-11-02).

Fetches and summarizes a Hacker News item (story, Ask HN, etc.) with its comment tree: comment count, depth, unique authors, and top excerpted comments.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://hacker-news.x402tookit.com/hn-item?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.02/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-11-02
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/hacker-news-item-summarizer-2819f5bf
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_pcd3EMXW7aCut-m9B7X6X

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability hacker-news-item-summarizer-2819f5bf
```

Example prompt: Can you summarize Hacker News item 8863 for me, including the top 5 comments and a sense of how deep the discussion goes?

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need a summarized digest of a specific Hacker News story and its discussion — identified by item ID — rather than searching for stories or browsing feeds. Ideal when you already have a HN item ID (from a URL like news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863) and want both story metadata and community sentiment without reading the full thread. Prefer this over the search or feed endpoints when the target item is already known.

## Known failure modes

- Invalid or non-existent item ID returns null or error fields
- Deleted or dead items may return minimal metadata with empty comment data
- Very large comment trees may be truncated, indicated by the degraded flag
- Payment failure (x402) if USDC balance is insufficient
- Rate limiting if too many requests are made in quick succession
- The 'top' parameter outside 0-10 range may be rejected or clamped

## How this service works

Summarise a Hacker News item and its comment tree: comment count, depth, authors and top comments, truncated.

## Output

Returns a structured summary of the HN item including: title, URL, domain, author, points, post timestamp, total comment count, top-level comment count, unique commenter count, maximum comment tree depth, an AI-generated summary of the story, a discussion summary, and an array of top-comment excerpts (each with author, timestamp, reply count, and text excerpt). May include a degraded flag if data retrieval was partial.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "GET"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "required": [
      "id"
     ],
     "properties": {
      "id": {
       "type": "integer",
       "description": "Item id, e.g. 8863 (the number in news.ycombinator.com/item?id=)"
      },
      "top": {
       "type": "integer",
       "description": "Top-level comments to excerpt, 0 to 10 (default 5)"
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object",
     "properties": {
      "by": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "id": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "number"
       ]
      },
      "url": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "asOf": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "type": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "title": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "domain": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "points": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "number"
       ]
      },
      "source": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "reasons": {
       "type": [
        "array",
        "null"
       ],
       "items": {
        "type": "string"
       }
      },
      "summary": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "verdict": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "comments": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "number"
       ]
      },
      "degraded": {
       "type": [
        "boolean",
        "null"
       ]
      },
      "maxDepth": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "number"
       ]
      },
      "postedAt": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "sourceUrl": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },

… (truncated)
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/hacker-news-item-summarizer-2819f5bf/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from hacker-news.x402tookit.com](https://www.zero.xyz/host/hacker-news.x402tookit.com/llms.txt)