# SiteCheck Web Intel – Hacker News Search

> SiteCheck Web Intel – Hacker News Search is a paid API for AI agents from api.webintel-api.workers.dev, paid per call via x402, $0.002/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-25).

Searches Hacker News stories by keyword, returning ranked results with points, comment counts, authors, and links

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://api.webintel-api.workers.dev/api/search/hacker-news?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.002/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-25
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/sitecheck-web-intel-hacker-news-search-ce00f0e7
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_ev_0-fkaDpidJYpmKJSa8

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 sitecheck-web-intel-hacker-news-search-ce00f0e7
```

Example prompt: Search Hacker News for the top 10 posts about WebAssembly and show me the titles, points, and comment counts.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need to surface Hacker News community sentiment, discussion threads, or trending stories about any tech, startup, or programming topic without requiring an API key or signup. Prefer it over generic web search when the goal is specifically to gauge developer or hacker community opinion, find upvoted technical discussions, or track how the HN audience has responded to a company, technology, or article. It is pay-per-call with no subscription overhead, making it ideal for sporadic or agent-driven lookups.

## Known failure modes

- Missing required 'q' query parameter returns an error
- Query exceeding 200 characters may be rejected
- limit value outside 1–30 range may be ignored or cause an error
- Algolia upstream outage results in failed fetch
- No stories found for an obscure query returns empty items array with nbHits 0
- Payment not processed results in no charge and no response

## How this service works

Hacker News story search through the official HN Search API (Algolia, public, no key): title, article URL, author, points, comment count and discussion link. Returns stories only, most relevant first.

## Output

Returns a JSON object with the search query, total hit count, and an array of up to 30 stories. Each story includes its Hacker News ID, original article URL, direct HN thread URL, title, author username, upvote points, comment count, and ISO 8601 creation timestamp. Also includes the underlying Algolia source URL and the time the data was fetched.

## 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": [
      "q"
     ],
     "properties": {
      "q": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Search words (1 to 200 characters)"
      },
      "limit": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "How many stories, 1 to 30 (default 10)"
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "q": "rust",
  "count": 3,
  "items": [
   {
    "id": 22238335,
    "url": "https://blog.discordapp.com/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to-rust-a190bbca2b1f",
    "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22238335",
    "title": "Why Discord is switching from Go to Rust",
    "author": "Sikul",
    "points": 1582,
    "comments": 642,
    "createdAt": "2020-02-04T17:30:40Z"
   },
   {
    "id": 40172033,
    "url": "https://loglog.games/blog/leaving-rust-gamedev/",
    "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40172033",
    "title": "Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years",
    "author": "darthdeus",
    "points": 1484,
    "comments": 972,
    "createdAt": "2024-04-26T17:33:56Z"
   }
  ],
  "nbHits": 60968,
  "source": "https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search",
  "checkedAt": "2026-10-23T09:38:43.889Z"
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/sitecheck-web-intel-hacker-news-search-ce00f0e7/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from api.webintel-api.workers.dev](https://www.zero.xyz/host/api.webintel-api.workers.dev/llms.txt)