# Hacker News Trending Keywords

> Hacker News Trending Keywords is a paid API for AI agents from hacker-news.x402tookit.com, paid per call via x402, $0.03/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-11-02).

Returns the most frequently occurring keywords across current Hacker News stories, ranked by title usage frequency with example titles.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://hacker-news.x402tookit.com/hn-trending-topics?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.03/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-trending-keywords-0919614c
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_ZQEG9xMnB8SPYaoR-aeT7

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-trending-keywords-0919614c
```

Example prompt: What are the top 10 trending keywords across the current Hacker News front page stories right now? Analyze the top 15 stories and show me which terms appear most often along with example titles.

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need a fast, keyword-level pulse of what topics are currently popular on Hacker News without reading individual stories. Ideal for trend monitoring, content planning, or competitive intelligence where you want the signal distilled from multiple HN stories at once. Prefer this over the search endpoint when you don't have a specific query in mind and want open-ended discovery of what's trending now.

## Known failure modes

- HN API unavailability causes degraded mode with partial results or null data
- Requesting more than 20 terms or more than 15 stories returns a validation error
- Invalid list type value causes an error — must be top, new, best, ask, or show
- Very few stories available may reduce the meaningfulness of term frequency rankings

## How this service works

Trending keywords across current Hacker News stories: terms ranked by how many titles use them, with example titles.

## Output

A JSON object containing a timestamp, the list type analyzed, number of titles analyzed, and an array of trending terms each with: the keyword, share percentage of titles it appears in, count of titles containing it, a total relevance score, and example HN story titles that use the term. Also includes a plain-language summary and any degraded-mode warnings.

## 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": [],
     "properties": {
      "top": {
       "type": "integer",
       "description": "Terms to return 1 to 20 (default 10)"
      },
      "list": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "top (default), new, best, ask or show"
      },
      "stories": {
       "type": "integer",
       "description": "Stories to analyse 5 to 15 (default 15)"
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object",
     "properties": {
      "asOf": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "list": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "terms": {
       "type": [
        "array",
        "null"
       ],
       "items": {
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
         "term": {
          "type": [
           "null",
           "string"
          ]
         },
         "share": {
          "type": [
           "null",
           "number"
          ]
         },
         "titles": {
          "type": [
           "null",
           "number"
          ]
         },
         "totalScore": {
          "type": [
           "null",
           "number"
          ]
         },
         "exampleTitles": {
          "type": [
           "array",
           "null"
          ],
          "items": {
           "type": "string"
          }
         }
        }
       }
      },
      "source": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "reasons": {
       "type": [
        "array",
        "null"
       ],
       "items": {
        "type": "string"
       }
      },
      "summary": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "verdict": {
       "type": [
        "null",
        "string"
       ]
      },
      "degraded": {
       "type": [
        "boolean",
        "null"
       ]
      },
      "sourceUrl": {
       "type": 
… (truncated)
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/hacker-news-trending-keywords-0919614c/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)