🟠 hn-mcp — Post to Hacker News via MCP

The only MCP server that can write to Hacker News. All 7+ existing HN MCP servers are read-only. This one submits stories, posts comments, and checks your submissions.

Tools

Tool	What it does
hn_login	Login to HN (persists cookies across restarts)
hn_submit	Submit a story (link post or Ask HN)
hn_comment	Post a comment or reply
hn_my_submissions	Check your recent posts with scores
hn_search	Search HN via Algolia

Setup

cd hn-mcp
uv sync

Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hackernews": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "--directory", "/Users/YOU/path/to/hn-mcp", "python3", "server.py"],
      "env": {
        "HN_USERNAME": "your_hn_username",
        "HN_PASSWORD": "your_hn_password"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor / Windsurf

Add to your MCP config:

{
  "hackernews": {
    "command": "uv",
    "args": ["run", "--directory", "/Users/YOU/path/to/hn-mcp", "python3", "server.py"],
    "env": {
      "HN_USERNAME": "your_hn_username",
      "HN_PASSWORD": "your_hn_password"
    }
  }
}

Usage

Just talk naturally:

• "Submit my dispatch to Hacker News as Show HN"
• "Post a comment on item 12345 explaining our scanner"
• "Check how my last HN submission is doing"
• "Search HN for axios supply chain attack"

How it works

HN has no write API. This server:

1. Logs in via HTTP POST with session cookies
2. Extracts FNID/HMAC CSRF tokens from forms
3. Submits via POST (same as clicking "submit" in the browser)
4. Persists cookies to ~/.hn-mcp-cookies.pkl for reuse

Security

• Credentials via environment variables (never in code)
• Session cookies at ~/.hn-mcp-cookies.pkl
• No data sent anywhere except news.ycombinator.com and hn.algolia.com

License

MIT — booklib-ai