Hacker News
Read Hacker News stories, comments, users, and story-id lists from the official public v0 API.
About
Hacker News ships in the w6w first-party pack. It declares 10 actions, 2 health checks, and the host runs its code in a sandbox that never sees the credential.
- App id
io.w6w.hackernews- Version
- 0.1.0
- Author
- w6w
- Licence
- MIT
- Categories
- Social Media · Developer Tools
Overview
Hacker News publishes its live data through a public, read-only v0 API (Firebase-backed): every story, comment, job, poll, and poll option is an “item” addressable by its integer id, and user profiles are addressable by username. This app covers the whole read surface the API documents: fetching one item or user, walking the current top/new/best/Ask HN/Show HN/job story-id lists, reading the current max item id (for walking the id space backward), and reading the changefeed of recently updated items and profiles.
The API needs no credential of any kind and documents no rate limit, so every action here runs unsigned. A missing or bogus id still answers HTTP 200 with a JSON null body rather than a 404 — every action that reads a single item or user passes that null straight through instead of treating it as an error, since the vendor itself does not.
Build with Hacker News
Three routes to the same 10 actions. The Workflow tab is generated from Hacker News's own manifest and carries its real ids, so it is copy-pasteable; the Code and CLI examples are the same call for any action on any app, so every app-specific value in them is a blank you fill in.
Get Max Item ID
get-max-item-id Fetch the current largest item id, for walking backward through all items.
A workflow step names the app and the action, and the editor fills in the
connection when you pick one. This is the Step shape from the
workflow spec, carrying Hacker News's real ids.
{
"manifestVersion": "2",
"name": "hackernews-example",
"steps": [
{
"id": "get-item",
"uses": {
"app": "io.w6w.hackernews",
"action": "get-item",
"connection": null
},
"with": {
"id": "<id>"
}
}
]
}Here are some of the things you can do
-
Get Item
readget-item -
Get Max Item ID
readget-max-item-id -
Get Updates
readget-updates -
Get User
readget-user -
List Ask HN Stories
readlist-ask-stories
+5 more actions available
Every app-specific value here is a blank you have to fill in. An
app action is reached through the connection that authenticates it, so the
address is a connection id, not the app id — and connections belong to your account,
so a public page cannot know yours. Create one for Hacker News, then fill in
the three blanks: conn_YOUR_CONNECTION_ID, the action key, and the
parameters that action declares. The call itself is real — the shape is transcribed
from the studio's own snippet builder, which prints the same kind of blanks — but
nothing in it is specific to Hacker News. The Workflow tab is where this app's
real ids are.
npm install @w6w/sdkyarn add @w6w/sdkpnpm add @w6w/sdkdeno add npm:@w6w/sdkimport { W6wClient, isActionRun } from "@w6w/sdk";
// Reads W6W_BASE_URL and W6W_TOKEN from the environment when omitted.
const client = new W6wClient();
const envelope = await client.run({
urn: "conn_YOUR_CONNECTION_ID",
action: "get-item",
payload: {
id: "<value>",
},
});
if (isActionRun(envelope)) console.log(envelope.value);npm install -g @w6w/cliw6w run conn_YOUR_CONNECTION_ID --action get-item --payload '{"id":"<value>"}'Give an AI agent Hacker News — without giving it Hacker News's credentials. One MCP endpoint exposes every app, function and workflow the caller is entitled to, as tools it can discover and run. Access is granted per team while we onboard.
One tool call{
"name": "w6w_invoke",
"arguments": {
"ref": "app:io.w6w.hackernews#get-item",
"input": {
"id": "<id>"
}
}
}
Every tool names its target with a single ref. The
app: form above doesn't name a connection at all — the
host resolves which of the caller's Hacker News connections to sign
with, and refuses rather than guesses when the answer is ambiguous.
What the agent gets
Credentials it can't read
The token is attached host-side, at the moment of the call. It is never a tool argument, never in the model's context, and never in a transcript — so a prompt injection has nothing to exfiltrate.
A tool surface scoped to the caller
Tools are derived per end user from what that person has actually connected and is entitled to — not one shared bot identity carrying the union of everyone's access.
A durable workflow in one call
Multi-step work runs on the workflow engine and returns a run handle the agent can poll — retries, branching and state survive the conversation that started them.
Health-aware discovery
Hacker News's declared health checks are on the surface too, so an agent can tell "the vendor is down" from "your credential expired" before it burns a retry on either.
The MCP surface is part of the hosted platform. Hacker News itself is MIT, and the runtime that executes it is source-available (FSL).
Health checks
Hacker News declares its own checks, so its health is a property of the app rather than something the host guesses at.
Hacker News API reachable
Hacker News publishes no dedicated status page for its Firebase-hosted v0 API — this GETs /v0/maxitem.json (no credential needed) and confirms the body is a plausible integer.