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Hacker News n8n integrationAutomate Hacker News with n8n.

Reading Hacker News by hand stops working the day it becomes a daily job. The Hacker News n8n integration exposes 3 operations spread over 3 resources: search the whole index, pull one article with its comment thread, look up a user. No trigger node ships with it, so a schedule or a webhook starts the run.

Try the Hacker News integration on n8nSee the 3 operations

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Why automate

What does the Hacker News n8n integration actually do?

The Hacker News node ships inside n8n and reads the public Hacker News API. It covers 3 resources, All, Article and User, with 1 operation each, so a workflow can search the whole index, fetch a single story together with its comments, or pull one user record. Nothing goes back the other way: from n8n, Hacker News is read-only.

Start with the watch scenario, because it is the one people build first. A schedule runs every morning, the node searches for a product name with the Keyword field, the Tags field keeps only story and show_hn, and the rows land in Google Sheets next to the ones from last week. Nobody opens the site to find out a launch got picked up.

Second scenario: a single thread that matters. One story gets traction, so the workflow calls the Article resource with Include Comments switched on, hands the discussion to a model or a filter, and posts the short version to Slack. The comment thread is where the signal usually is, and it arrives in the same run as the article.

Third, the person behind the post. The User resource takes a handle and returns that account, which is enough to decide whether an author is worth a follow-up. Send the result to Telegram if the workflow is a personal alert rather than a team channel.

When the node stops short, switch to HTTP Request. That node calls any endpoint of the API directly, and it stays the right answer for anything outside these 3 operations. Hacker News stays read-only from n8n either way: the node only fetches data, nothing gets written back to Hacker News from a workflow.

Two limits worth knowing before you build. Search results are paginated, so Return All off means the run stops at Limit and a quiet workflow silently misses items. And there is no trigger node for this tool, which means the workflow never wakes up on its own; a Schedule Trigger or an n8n Webhook, an URL a third-party service calls, has to start it. The n8n review covers how that plays out on bigger setups, and the n8n training walks through building one end to end.

Connect

How do you connect Hacker News to n8n?

  1. 01

    Add the node to a workflow

    Open the node panel in n8n and search for Hacker News. The node is called n8n-nodes-base.hackerNews and its one-line description, Consume Hacker News API, tells you what it is scoped to. It ships with n8n, on n8n Cloud and on a self-hosted instance alike, so there is no package to install and no extra cost on the n8n side.

  2. 02

    Skip the credential step

    This node does not require authentication. There is no API key to generate, no token to paste, no entry to create in the Credentials menu of n8n. That is unusual: most nodes ask you to save a credential once and then reuse it across every workflow. Here the dropdown simply is not there, and a fresh n8n instance can call Hacker News in its first minute.

  3. 03

    Pick a resource, then an operation

    The node starts with a Resource choice, All, Article or User, and each one carries a single operation. All searches items, Article returns one story, User returns one account. Choosing the resource first is what changes the fields below, so set it before filling anything in, otherwise you configure a form that is about to be replaced.

Actions

What the Hacker News node can do

The Hacker News node exposes 3 operations across 3 resources. For each one: the node as you configure it in n8n, the required fields, and our field notes.

Resources × operations matrix
ResourceGetGet Many
All✓
Article✓
User✓

All

1 operation
01

Get many items

all.getAll

What you see in n8n

Notes & use cases

Runs a search across the Hacker News index and returns every matching item as its own n8n item, ready for whatever node comes next.

Key parameters

  • Return All: on, n8n chains the pages of the API until nothing is left; off, Limit sets the maximum number of items that come back.
  • Keyword: the term used to filter the results of the query, a product name or a competitor for instance.
  • Tags: restricts the query to any of the 6 tags the API exposes, story, comment, poll, ask_hn, show_hn and front_page.
Use cases
a daily watch that searches a brand name, keeps only story and show_hn, and appends each hit to a sheet.

Article

1 operation
02

Get an article

article.get

What you see in n8n

Notes & use cases

Pulls one Hacker News article by its identifier, so a workflow can work on a specific story instead of a result set.

Key parameters

  • Article ID: required, the ID of the article to return. Type it in for a one-off, or map it from an earlier node with an expression such as {{ $json.id }}.
  • Include Comments: sits under Additional Fields. Switch it on and all the comments of the article come back with it, in the same item.
Use cases
a thread starts moving, the workflow reloads it with its comments and posts a condensed read to a channel.

User

1 operation
03

Get a user

user.get

What you see in n8n

Notes & use cases

Looks up a single Hacker News account and returns that user, which is the fastest way to put a face on a handle inside a workflow.

Key parameters

  • Username: required, the Hacker News user to return. Spell it exactly as it appears on the site, or feed it from the previous node with {{ $json.username }}.
Use cases
after a Show HN story is picked up by the watch workflow, the author handle goes through this operation before the alert leaves n8n.
Need help

Need help automating Hacker News with n8n?

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FAQ

Questions people ask next

01Is the Hacker News n8n integration free?
Yes. The Hacker News node ships with n8n, so there is nothing to buy and nothing to install on the n8n side, whether you run n8n Cloud or a self-hosted instance under the Community Edition and its Sustainable Use license. The tool side is free of friction too, since this node requires no authentication at all: no account to link, no API key to generate, no paid tier to unlock the 3 operations. The only cost is the one you already pay for running n8n, and a workflow built on n8n Cloud behaves the same once you move it to your own server.
02What credentials does the Hacker News node need in n8n?
None. The node documentation is explicit on this point: it does not require authentication, and the node has no authentication selector. In practice that means you never open the Credentials menu for it, which is the opposite of most n8n nodes, where a credential is created once and then reused across every workflow that touches the same tool. The consequence is worth keeping in mind when a run fails: since no key, token or scope is involved, the cause is on the parameter side, usually an empty required field or an expression pointing at a field that the incoming item does not carry.
03What are the limits of the Hacker News node?
It reads, and that is all. The node covers 3 operations over 3 resources: search items, get one article, get one user. No parameter turns any of them into a write call. The second limit is pagination. With Return All off, a search stops at the number set in Limit, so a workflow that looks quiet may simply be truncated. For anything the node does not expose, the HTTP Request node calls the API endpoint directly and slots into the same workflow, which is the standard fallback in n8n.
04Does the Hacker News node react in real time?
No, and it cannot: there is no Hacker News trigger node in n8n, so nothing pushes new stories into a workflow on its own. You start the run from another trigger instead. A Schedule Trigger at a fixed interval is the usual answer for a watch, since it re-runs the search on your own rhythm, every morning or every hour. An n8n Webhook, that is an URL a third-party service calls, works when something else in your setup decides the moment. The trigger of another tool does the job too, when the story lookup is a step inside a larger flow rather than the starting point.
05n8n or Make for Hacker News?
It depends on how you want to host and pay. Make is hosted by Make, with no self-hosting option, and it bills per operation, so a search that returns a long list of items costs more as the list grows. n8n runs on n8n Cloud or on your own server, which keeps the data on infrastructure you control and decouples the bill from the volume of items a workflow moves. The visual logic differs too: n8n lets you drop into code or into an HTTP Request node mid-flow, which matters here since the node stays read-only. Both connect to Hacker News without a key.
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