# Vextorium Hacker News Comments

> Vextorium Hacker News Comments is a paid API for AI agents from api.vextorium.com, paid per call via x402, $0.003/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-22).

Fetches all comments of a Hacker News story in threaded order, with author, text, and nesting level, given a story ID or URL.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://api.vextorium.com/v1/hackernews-comments?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.003/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-22
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/vextorium-hacker-news-comments-5f7c8a6d
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_rkOHHOolIefMb5MMzbSWJ

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 vextorium-hacker-news-comments-5f7c8a6d -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Can you pull all the comments from this Hacker News story — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 — in thread order, showing the author, text, and nesting level for each one?

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need structured, threaded HN comment data including author, nesting level, and timestamps for a specific story — particularly useful over raw HN Firebase API calls when you want thread-ordered output without building the tree yourself. Prefer this over scraping or the raw Firebase API when you need Algolia-augmented results with clean nesting metadata in a single call.

## Known failure modes

- Invalid or non-existent story ID returns an error or empty result
- Story URL not recognized as a valid HN item URL causes a parsing failure
- Limit parameter too low may truncate expected comments
- Rate limiting or upstream HN API unavailability may cause timeouts
- Private or deleted stories may return no comments

## How this service works

558 pay-per-call data APIs for AI agents: Solana and EVM on-chain data, tokenized stocks, DeFi, Hyperliquid, economy and official statistics, FX, validation, web and developer tools. Pay in USDC via x402.

## Output

Returns a JSON object containing the story metadata (title, URL, author, HN URL, points) and an array of comments each with text, author, nesting level (0 = top-level), HN comment URL, and creation timestamp, plus a total comment count and source attribution.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "item": {
   "type": "string"
  },
  "limit": {
   "type": "integer"
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "count": 50,
  "story": {
   "url": "http://www.getdropbox.com/u/2/screencast.html",
   "title": "My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive",
   "author": "dhouston",
   "hn_url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863",
   "points": 104
  },
  "source": "Hacker News (official Firebase API and Algolia HN Search)",
  "comments": [
   {
    "text": "oh, and a mac port is coming :)",
    "level": 0,
    "author": "dhouston",
    "hn_url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8865",
    "created_at": "2007-04-04T19:22:55.000Z"
   },
   {
    "text": "Drew, this is awesome! All of the features you mentioned are exactly what people need.",
    "level": 1,
    "author": "vlad",
    "hn_url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9007",
    "created_at": "2007-04-05T01:48:11.000Z"
   }
  ]
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/vextorium-hacker-news-comments-5f7c8a6d/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from api.vextorium.com](https://www.zero.xyz/host/api.vextorium.com/llms.txt)