# Hacker News Story Search by Query

> Hacker News Story Search by Query is a paid API for AI agents from clonecho.builda.company, paid per call via x402, $0.02/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-14).

Searches Hacker News stories matching a text query, returning results ranked by relevance with points and comment counts.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://clonecho.builda.company/x402/hn-search
- Price: $0.02/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-story-search-by-query-01ee6fb4
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_X_5A5hUphJi8Tk0Dujj74

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-story-search-by-query-01ee6fb4 -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Search Hacker News for stories about Rust and show me the top results with their upvote counts and comment counts.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need to search Hacker News specifically for community-ranked tech stories, developer discussions, or startup news by keyword — particularly when relevance ranking and engagement signals (points, comments) matter. Prefer this over generic web search when the goal is specifically to gauge what the Hacker News developer community thinks about a topic.

## Known failure modes

- Empty result set if query matches no HN stories
- Missing or malformed ?q= parameter may return an error or empty results
- Payment failure (402) if USDC balance is insufficient
- Upstream HN search API downtime causing fetch errors
- Rate limiting if called excessively in a short window

## How this service works

Hacker News stories matching a query (?q=rust) ranked by relevance, with points and comment counts. Returns JSON.

## Output

A JSON array of Hacker News stories matching the query, each including the story title, URL, author, points (upvotes), number of comments, and relevance-ranked position.

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/hacker-news-story-search-by-query-01ee6fb4/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from clonecho.builda.company](https://www.zero.xyz/host/clonecho.builda.company/llms.txt)