Swytchcode is a CLI execution layer that sits between your AI agent and production APIs like Hacker News—handling authentication, retries, idempotency, and policy control so your agent can call real APIs safely instead of failing silently.

How do I get started with Swytchcode?

Run "npx swytchcode" to install the CLI. Your first 2 live commands don't need an account; after that, run "swytchcode login". Dry runs, --explain, and demos don't count. Then run "swytchcode get hackernews" to pull the Hacker News manifest and you're ready to call it from your agent.

How does an AI agent actually call the Hacker News API through Swytchcode?

Your agent runs "swytchcode exec hackernews. " with arguments. Swytchcode validates the call against the Hacker News manifest schema, attaches your stored credentials, executes the request, and returns structured JSON your agent can act on—no auth or HTTP handling lives in your agent's code.

What happens if a Hacker News call fails, times out, or hits a rate limit?

Swytchcode assigns every Hacker News call an idempotency key and retries it automatically on transient failures or rate limits. If your agent re-runs the same action, Swytchcode recognizes the retry and prevents duplicate writes—a raw HTTP call wouldn't give you that safety net.

Can I restrict which Hacker News actions my agent is allowed to run?

Yes. Allow and deny rules, available on every plan, can limit which Hacker News actions run. Approval workflows, available on Business and above, hold a matching command until someone approves or denies it in that workspace's Slack or Telegram channel. If nobody responds within 48 hours, the command doesn't run.

Where does Swytchcode store my Hacker News credentials?

You authenticate once, and Swytchcode stores and refreshes your Hacker News credentials server-side. Your agent—and the LLM behind it—only ever sees action names and results, never raw API keys or tokens.

Do I need to write a custom Hacker News SDK integration for my agent?

No. "swytchcode get hackernews" pulls a pre-built, versioned manifest describing every available Hacker News action and its parameters, so your agent calls actions by name instead of you writing and maintaining request/response glue code.

How is calling Hacker News through Swytchcode different from calling its API directly?

A direct call means you handle token refresh, retries, error parsing, and schema drift yourself, with no guardrails on what the agent can execute. Swytchcode does all of that and checks each call against your policy rules first, so an agent can't do something with Hacker News you didn't explicitly approve.

Do I need a specific framework to call Hacker News?

No. Swytchcode runs as a CLI or MCP server, so any agent, IDE assistant, or script can call it. Use the LLM and framework your team prefers.

Does Swytchcode log what my agent does with Hacker News?

Yes. Every Hacker News call—action, arguments, result, and timestamp—is written to a full audit trail, so you can debug unexpected agent behavior or review exactly what ran in production.

Get started

API Integration

Hacker News API for AI Agents

Official public read-only Firebase REST API for Hacker News by Y Combinator. Provides access to items (stories, comments, jobs, polls, and poll options), user profiles, ranked story feeds (/topstories, /newstories, /beststories, /askstories, /showstories, /jobstories), current maximum item ID (/maxitem), and real-time changed entity IDs (/updates). Call the Hacker News API from the agent stack you already run. Swytchcode supplies the manifest, then handles authentication, retries, idempotency, and validation on every call.

Copy paste to your AI agent

Visit official site

Provider: Hacker News
Category: General
License: Proprietary
Manifest: hackernews
Official site: news.ycombinator.com
API docs: Not published

Use cases

What can you build with the Hacker News API?

Copy a prompt for the kind of Hacker News assistant you want. Each one includes the skills.md setup.

Catch-up assistant

Lookup assistant

Failure watcher

Status writer

Record assistant

Access advisor

Setup guide

How to connect the Hacker News API to an AI agent

Four steps, no SDK, no boilerplate. Every Hacker News call routed through Swytchcode is idempotency-keyed and safe to retry.

1
Install the CLI
Run "npx swytchcode" to install the Swytchcode CLI—no account required to start.
2
Pull the manifest
Run "swytchcode get hackernews" to pull the Hacker News API manifest, including its schema and available actions.
3
Authenticate once
Provide your Hacker News API credentials a single time. Swytchcode stores and refreshes them so your agent never handles raw secrets.
4
Call it from your agent
Run "swytchcode exec hackernews.<action> --key value" from any agent or script. No SDK, no framework lock-in.

swytchcode get hackernews
swytchcode exec hackernews.<action> --key value

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Build me a Hacker News AI assistant

Copy the prompt into your agent. It will load Swytchcode and wire up Hacker News.