# Hacker News Search via Algolia

> Hacker News Search via Algolia is a paid API for AI agents from intel.rallylive.ca, paid per call via x402, $0.01/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-14).

Search Hacker News stories and comments by keyword phrase, returning the top 15 results sorted by relevance with points, comment counts, author, date, and links.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://intel.rallylive.ca/data/hn-search
- Price: $0.01/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-14
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/hacker-news-search-via-algolia-c85bdc9e
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_NiM1bodGF5eIRyLKptSm4

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-search-via-algolia-c85bdc9e
```

Example prompt: Search Hacker News for discussions about 'OpenAI o3' and show me the top results with their point counts, comment totals, authors, and links.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need to surface prior Hacker News community discussion, sentiment, or coverage of any topic, product, company, or technology. It is ideal for developer-focused research, startup due diligence, or understanding how the tech community has reacted to a concept. Prefer this over general web search when you specifically want HN signal — upvote-weighted community opinion with threading context — rather than broad web coverage.

## Known failure modes

- Empty result set if the search phrase matches no indexed HN content
- Payment failure or 402 response if USDC funds are insufficient
- Rate limiting or timeout if the Algolia backend is slow
- Malformed query string may return unexpected or zero results
- Very broad or common search terms may return low-relevance top results

## How this service works

Hacker News search (Algolia): top 15 stories and comments matching a phrase, with points, comment counts, author, date and links, sorted by relevance. Find prior discussion of any topic or product. $0.01 per search.

## Output

A list of up to 15 Hacker News stories and/or comments matching the search phrase, each including the title or comment text, author username, publication date, upvote points, comment count, and a direct link to the HN thread — all sorted by Algolia relevance score.

## 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",
     "properties": {}
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/hacker-news-search-via-algolia-c85bdc9e/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from intel.rallylive.ca](https://www.zero.xyz/host/intel.rallylive.ca/llms.txt)