# Hacker News Stories

> Hacker News Stories is a paid API for AI agents from bess-x402.onrender.com, paid per call via x402, $0.002/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-28).

Fetches Hacker News stories by keyword search (sorted by relevance or date) or the current front page, returning title, link, points, comment count, author, timestamp, and discussion URL.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://bess-x402.onrender.com/v1/news/hackernews?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.002/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-28
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/hacker-news-stories-5d112b1a
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_6Ois75Io2yz78HW_7Wrcu

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-stories-5d112b1a
```

Example prompt: Can you search Hacker News for discussions about WebAssembly, sorted by relevance, and show me the top 10 results with their points and comment counts?

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need to surface developer community discussions, sentiment, or news from Hacker News specifically — ideal for tech/startup research, trend monitoring, and gauging developer opinion. Prefer this over generic web search when the audience is explicitly the developer/hacker community and you want structured metadata (points, comments, author) alongside links.

## Known failure modes

- Missing required 'type' or 'method' fields in input returns a validation error
- Invalid sort value (not 'relevance', 'date', or 'front_page') may return an error or unexpected results
- Limit outside 1-100 range may be clamped or rejected
- Empty query with sort set to 'relevance' or 'date' (instead of 'front_page') may return no results or an error
- Render.com cold start may add latency on first request after inactivity

## How this service works

Hacker News stories by keyword (by relevance or newest) or the current front page: title, link, points, comment count, author, time and discussion URL. Use to see what developers are discussing about a topic.

## Output

Returns a list of Hacker News stories, each containing: story title, link to the original article, points (upvotes), number of comments, author username, posting timestamp, and the HN discussion URL. Results are ordered by the chosen sort (relevance, date, or front page ranking).

## 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",
      "HEAD",
      "DELETE"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "required": [],
     "properties": {
      "q": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Search words (omit for front page)"
      },
      "sort": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "relevance, date or front_page"
      },
      "limit": {
       "type": "integer",
       "description": "Maximum number of results (1-100)"
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "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-stories-5d112b1a/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from bess-x402.onrender.com](https://www.zero.xyz/host/bess-x402.onrender.com/llms.txt)