Hacker News Story, Comment & Karma Scraper: MCP config, n8n workflow and API

{
  "mode": "topStories",
  "searchSort": "relevance",
  "contentTypes": [
    "story"
  ],
  "exhaustiveSearch": false,
  "excludeDeadOrDeleted": true,
  "commentSort": "rank",
  "maxComments": 0,
  "maxDepth": 5,
  "enableCommentHierarchy": false,
  "includeSubmissions": false,
  "submissionTypes": "all",
  "hiringMonths": 1,
  "remoteOnly": false,
  "maxItems": 20,
  "includeAuthorProfiles": false
}

---
name: hacker-news-story-comment-and-karma-scraper
description: "Stories, comments, jobs, polls, poll options, user profiles, and parsed Who is hiring? posts from Hacker News. Runs the Apify Actor dataspryva/hacker-news-story-comment-and-karma-scraper. Use when the user needs Hacker News data with fields such as recordType, title, company, role, url, score and an Apify token is available."
compatibility: "Needs network access, curl, and an APIFY_TOKEN environment variable. Runs are billed to the token owner's Apify account."
metadata:
  actor: "dataspryva/hacker-news-story-comment-and-karma-scraper"
  store-url: "https://apify.com/dataspryva/hacker-news-story-comment-and-karma-scraper"
---

# Hacker News Story, Comment & Karma Scraper

Use this skill to fetch Hacker News data with the Apify Actor `dataspryva/hacker-news-story-comment-and-karma-scraper` and work with the returned rows.

## Before running

1. Check that `APIFY_TOKEN` is set in the environment. Never print it or write it to a file.
2. Build `input.json` from the user's request using the fields below. Keep limits small for a first run.
3. Confirm the search terms or URLs with the user if the request is ambiguous.

## Input fields

| Field | Type | Meaning |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `mode` | string, required | What to scrape. Feeds walk the live Hacker News lists. `item` looks up specific IDs, `user` loads profiles, `search` queries Hacker News history, `frontPage` reads a historical day, and `whoIsHiring` parses monthly hiring threads. |
| `itemIds` | array | Hacker News item IDs to look up, as numbers or numeric strings. Stories, comments, jobs, polls, and poll options are all accepted. |
| `usernames` | array | Hacker News usernames whose profiles and, optionally, submissions you want. |
| `searchQueries` | array | One or more keyword queries. Every query runs independently and the results are merged without duplicates. Leave empty to browse by tags, author, or story instead. |
| `searchSort` | one of `relevance`, `date` | `relevance` ranks by keyword match. `date` returns newest first and is more reproducible. |
| `contentTypes` | array | Which Hacker News record types search should return. Selecting several types returns any of them. `front_page` covers only the current front page. |
| `exhaustiveSearch` | boolean | Hacker News search exposes at most 1,000 hits per query. When enabled, the actor splits the requested date range into smaller windows so deeper result sets can be collected. Relevance order then follows each date window rather than one global ranking. |
| `domainAllowlist` | array | Keep only stories whose link host contains one of these text fragments. For example, `github.com` or `arxiv.org`. |
| `domainBlocklist` | array | Drop stories whose link host contains one of these text fragments. For example, `twitter.com` or `x.com`. |
| `excludeDeadOrDeleted` | boolean | Drop items marked dead or deleted by Hacker News. Turning this off uses the slower exact comment path so those records can be included. |
| `commentAuthorFilter` | array | Only keep comments written by these usernames. Matching is case-insensitive and accepts partial names. |
| `commentSort` | one of `rank`, `newest` | `rank` keeps Hacker News display order. `newest` orders sibling replies newest first. |
| `maxComments` | integer | How many comments to collect for each story. 0 skips comment collection. This is applied after a story passes your filters. |
| `maxDepth` | integer | Deepest reply level to keep when comments are collected. Root comments are depth 0. |

Example `input.json` (the Actor's published prefill):

```json
{
  "mode": "topStories",
  "searchSort": "relevance",
  "contentTypes": [
    "story"
  ],
  "exhaustiveSearch": false,
  "excludeDeadOrDeleted": true,
  "commentSort": "rank",
  "maxComments": 0,
  "maxDepth": 5,
  "enableCommentHierarchy": false,
  "includeSubmissions": false,
  "submissionTypes": "all",
  "hiringMonths": 1,
  "remoteOnly": false,
  "maxItems": 20,
  "includeAuthorProfiles": false
}
```

## Run

```bash
curl -sS -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/dataspryva~hacker-news-story-comment-and-karma-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d @input.json > results.json
```

The call waits for the run to finish and returns the dataset items as a JSON array. If the run needs more than 300 seconds the API answers with HTTP 408; then start the run with `POST /v2/acts/dataspryva~hacker-news-story-comment-and-karma-scraper/runs`, poll `GET /v2/actor-runs/{runId}` until `SUCCEEDED`, and read `GET /v2/datasets/{defaultDatasetId}/items`.

## Output

Each item is one record. Published fields include: `recordType`, `title`, `company`, `role`, `url`, `score`, `author`, `numComments`, `createdAt`, `domain`, `frontPageDate`.

Summarise what was found, cite the record URLs when present, and say how many items came back. Do not invent values for empty fields.