# Hacker News Search & Monitor (`scrapeworks/hacker-news-search`) Actor

Search and monitor Hacker News stories, comments, Ask HN, Show HN, jobs and users. No auth, clean structured JSON. Filter by points, date, author, and tags.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/scrapeworks/hacker-news-search.md
- **Developed by:** [Nicolas van Arkens](https://apify.com/scrapeworks) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Other, Open source
- **Features:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 6 total users, 1 monthly users, 73.7% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $5.00 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Hacker News Search & Monitor 🔎

Search and monitor **Hacker News** — stories, comments, Ask HN, Show HN, jobs, polls, and users — and get clean, structured JSON. No login, no API key, no proxies required. Built on the free official Algolia HN Search index, so it's fast and reliable.

Use it to **track mentions of your company, product, or competitors**, find **Show HN / Ask HN** discussions, monitor a topic over time, or build a Hacker News dataset for research and LLM pipelines.

### What you can do

- 🔍 **Keyword search** across all of Hacker News (titles, self-text, and comments)
- 🆕 **Monitor by date** — get the most recent matching items first, perfect for alerts and brand monitoring
- 🎯 **Filter** by content type (story, comment, Ask HN, Show HN, job, poll), minimum points, minimum comments, author, and date range
- 🧹 **Clean output** — one tidy record per item with direct links to both the source URL and the HN discussion
- ⚡ **Fast & lightweight** — pure API, no headless browser

### Example use cases

- **Brand / competitor monitoring:** search your company name sorted by date, schedule it daily, and pipe new mentions to Slack, email, or a sheet.
- **Lead & trend research:** find the highest-scoring stories about a technology or market in a date window.
- **Show HN / Ask HN discovery:** surface new launches or questions in your niche.
- **Datasets for AI:** pull thousands of HN comments on a topic for sentiment analysis or RAG.

### Input

| Field | Description |
|-------|-------------|
| **Search query** | Keyword(s) to search for. Leave empty to fetch the latest items by date (feed monitoring). |
| **Content type** | Stories, Comments, Ask HN, Show HN, Polls, Jobs, or All. |
| **Sort by** | Relevance (points & comments) or Date (most recent first). |
| **Maximum items** | Total items to return; paginates automatically. |
| **Minimum points / comments** | Only return stories above a threshold. |
| **Author** | Restrict to a single HN username. |
| **Created after / before** | Date range filter (YYYY-MM-DD). |
| **Include full text** | Include comment/self-post body text, or keep it metadata-only. |

### Output

Each item is returned as a record like this:

```json
{
  "id": "48126840",
  "type": "story",
  "title": "A Great Essay",
  "url": "https://example.com/essay",
  "author": "pg",
  "points": 412,
  "numComments": 233,
  "createdAt": "2026-05-13T20:11:17Z",
  "createdAtTimestamp": 1778703077,
  "storyId": 48126840,
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48126840",
  "authorUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg",
  "text": null
}
```

Export to JSON, CSV, or Excel, or pull results via the Apify API. Connect to Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier, or Make for automated monitoring.

### How it works

This actor queries the public Algolia Hacker News Search API (`hn.algolia.com/api/v1`), the same index that powers HN's own search. It paginates through results, applies your filters server-side where possible, normalizes every item into a consistent schema, and stores it in your dataset. It does not require — and never asks for — any credentials.

### Notes

- This actor accesses only publicly available Hacker News data via a free public API. It is an independent tool and is not affiliated with Y Combinator or Hacker News.
- Algolia caps results at the most recent/relevant matches per query; for very large historical pulls, narrow by date range and run in windows.

# Actor input Schema

## `query` (type: `string`):

Keyword(s) to search for across Hacker News. Leave empty to fetch the latest/front-page items by date without a keyword filter (useful for monitoring a feed).

## `contentType` (type: `string`):

Which kind of items to return.

## `sortBy` (type: `string`):

Relevance ranks by points & comments (best for discovery). Date returns most recent first (best for monitoring/alerts).

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

How many items to return in total. The actor paginates automatically.

## `minPoints` (type: `integer`):

Only return stories with at least this many points. Leave empty for no minimum. (Applies to stories; comments do not have points.)

## `minComments` (type: `integer`):

Only return stories with at least this many comments. Leave empty for no minimum.

## `author` (type: `string`):

Only return items written by this Hacker News username (e.g. 'pg'). Leave empty for all authors.

## `createdAfter` (type: `string`):

Only return items created on or after this date. Format: YYYY-MM-DD.

## `createdBefore` (type: `string`):

Only return items created before this date. Format: YYYY-MM-DD.

## `includeCommentText` (type: `boolean`):

Include the full body text of comments and self-posts. Turn off for a lighter, metadata-only dataset.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "query": "AI",
  "contentType": "story",
  "sortBy": "relevance",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "includeCommentText": true
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "query": "AI"
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("scrapeworks/hacker-news-search").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "query": "AI" }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("scrapeworks/hacker-news-search").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "query": "AI"
}' |
apify call scrapeworks/hacker-news-search --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,scrapeworks/hacker-news-search"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/ParZxRDJVI9oSDL61/builds/cXEyaDiRTy6DH0ZAh/openapi.json