# Hacker News User Profile Lookup

> Hacker News User Profile Lookup is a paid API for AI agents from hackernews-x402.vercel.app, paid per call via x402, $0.002/call, status down (last checked 2026-09-15).

Returns a Hacker News user's karma score, account creation date, about text, and total submission count for a given username.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://hackernews-x402.vercel.app/hn/user
- Price: $0.002/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: down
- Last checked: 2026-09-15
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/hackernews-x402-vercel-app-84fdd7e6
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_EblU6wqj8eT5zV1lJBkX_

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 hackernews-x402-vercel-app-84fdd7e6
```

Example prompt: Can you look up the Hacker News profile for username 'tptacek' — I want to know their karma score, how long they've been on HN, and how many things they've submitted?

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need structured profile data for a specific Hacker News user — karma, tenure, bio, and submission count — as a single low-cost lookup. Prefer this over scraping HN directly or using the Firebase HN API when you want a simple, paid, structured JSON response without managing API credentials.

## Known failure modes

- Username not found — returns error if the Hacker News username does not exist
- Missing required 'username' query parameter — returns a 400-style error
- Network or upstream Hacker News API unavailability — may return 5xx or timeout
- Payment failure — x402 payment of $0.002 USDC not processed, returns 402

## How this service works

Hacker News user profile. Returns karma score, account age, about text, and number of submissions.

## Output

Returns a JSON object with the user's HN username (id), karma score (integer), account creation timestamp (ISO 8601), about/bio text, and total number of submissions.

## Example request

```json
{
 "input": {
  "type": "http",
  "method": "GET",
  "queryParams": {
   "username": "dang"
  }
 }
}
```

## 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": [
      "username"
     ],
     "properties": {
      "username": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Hacker News username (required)"
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object",
     "properties": {
      "id": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "karma": {
       "type": "number"
      },
      "submitted_count": {
       "type": "number"
      }
     }
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/hackernews-x402-vercel-app-84fdd7e6/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from hackernews-x402.vercel.app](https://www.zero.xyz/host/hackernews-x402.vercel.app/llms.txt)