# Hacker News Search via x402 AgentUtility

> Hacker News Search via x402 AgentUtility is a paid API for AI agents from x402.agentutility.ai, paid per call via x402, $0.001/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-14).

Searches 30M+ Hacker News stories and comments using the Algolia HN index, with filters for type, author, points, date range, and sort order

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://x402.agentutility.ai/hn-search
- Price: $0.001/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-x402-agentutility-fc531235
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_5H7bko0Z4YmZgRLVo-fKw

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-x402-agentutility-fc531235 -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Search Hacker News for stories about 'AI agents' with at least 50 points, posted between 2024-01-01 and 2025-01-01, sorted by relevance — I want the top results including title, author, score, and URL.

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need to search or scrape Hacker News content at scale — including stories, comments, polls, or Who Is Hiring threads — especially when you need filtering by date, author, points, or content type. It's ideal over manually accessing HN or the raw Algolia API because it's wrapped as an x402-payable, agent-callable endpoint with no auth setup, making it plug-and-play for autonomous agents. Prefer it over Twitter/X search when you specifically need tech-savvy programmer community discourse, YC news, or startup ecosystem discussions.

## Known failure modes

- Empty results if query terms are too specific or misspelled
- Date range with no matching content returns zero hits
- Invalid type filter value causes request error
- Very broad queries may return noisy or irrelevant results
- Rate limits on the underlying Algolia API may cause transient failures
- x402 payment failure if wallet has insufficient USDC balance

## How this service works

Searches 30M+ Hacker News stories and comments via the public Algolia HN index. Filter by type (story|comment|poll), author, minimum points, ISO8601 date range (since/until), and sort by relevance or recency. Returns total hit count plus per-hit objectID, title, author, points, comment count, created_at, URL, and story/comment text. Public Algolia API, no auth, commercial-OK. Use it as an HN search, yc-news or startup-news search, who-is-hiring scraper, or programmer-news firehose.

## Output

Returns a total hit count and a list of matching items, each containing: objectID, story title, author username, upvote points, number of comments, creation timestamp (ISO8601), source URL, and the full story or comment text where available.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "type": "string",
     "enum": [
      "POST"
     ]
    },
    "bodyType": {
     "type": "string",
     "enum": [
      "json",
      "form-data",
      "text"
     ]
    },
    "body": {
     "properties": {
      "query": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Free-text search query (matches title, body, author, URL)."
      },
      "type": {
       "type": "string",
       "enum": [
        "story",
        "comment",
        "poll"
       ],
       "description": "Restrict to a single HN item type. Omit to include all types."
      },
      "author": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Filter to a specific HN username (e.g. 'pg', 'dang')."
      },
      "min_points": {
       "type": "number",
       "description": "Minimum points (upvotes) floor. Comments don't have points; using this implicitly filters to stories."
      },
      "since": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Lower bound on created_at — ISO8601 date (YYYY-MM-DD) or full timestamp."
      },
      "until": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Upper bound on created_at — ISO8601 date (YYYY-MM-DD) or full timestamp."
      },
      "sort": {
       "type": "string",
       "enum": [
        "relevance",
        "date"
       ],
       "description": "'relevance' (default, popularity-weighted) or 'date' (most-recent-first)."
      },
      "limit": {
       "type": "number",
       "description": "Max hits to return. 1-20. Default 10."
      }
     },
     "required": [
      "query"
     ]
    }
   },
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method",
    "bodyType",
    "body"
   ],
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object",
     "properties": {
      "query": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "total_hits": {
       "type": "integer"
      },
      "results": {
       "type": "array",
       "items": {
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
         "id": {
          "type": "string"
         },
         "title": {
          "type": "string"
         },
         "author": {
          "type": "string"
         },
         "points": {
          "type": "integer"

… (truncated)
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "query": "rust async",
  "source": "https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search",
  "results": [
   {
    "id": "39800000",
    "url": "https://without.boats/blog/async-rust-3/",
    "title": "Async Rust in three parts",
    "author": "boats",
    "points": 412,
    "created_at": "2024-03-15T14:22:01.000Z",
    "comments_count": 137
   }
  ],
  "total_hits": 4567
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/hacker-news-search-via-x402-agentutility-fc531235/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from x402.agentutility.ai](https://www.zero.xyz/host/x402.agentutility.ai/llms.txt)