Full-text search across all of Hacker News (via the Algolia HN API). Search stories or comments by keyword, sorted by relevance or by date (newest first). Filter by tags (story/comment/ask_hn/show_hn/poll) and by author. Each hit: title, URL, author, points, comment count, story/comment text, cre...
AI agents call news.hn-search to retrieve information from Mcp without modifying anything — typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.
This tool retrieves and queries publicly available Hacker News data with no ability to modify, delete, or execute operations. It is a read-only search interface that returns existing content. The search and filtering capabilities do not create side effects. Severity is low because the data is already public and freely accessible; unauthorized search queries pose minimal risk.
From the tool's definition Full-text search across all of Hacker News (via the Algolia HN API). Search stories or comments by keyword... Each hit: title, URL, author, points, comment count, story/comment text, created time, and canonical HN URL.
Attacks that exploit this kind of access
Full-text search across all of Hacker News (via the Algolia HN API). Search stories or comments by keyword, sorted by relevance or by date (newest first). Filter by tags (story/comment/ask_hn/show_hn/poll) and by author. Each hit: title, URL, author, points, comment count, story/comment text, created time, and canonical HN URL. Net-new vs news.hn-top (curated feeds) and news.search (general news). It is categorised as a Read tool in the Mcp MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.
Register the MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for news.hn-search: allow, deny, rate-limit, or require approval. Point your MCP client at the PolicyLayer proxy URL and the rule is enforced on every call, before it reaches Mcp. Nothing to install.
news.hn-search is a Read tool with low risk. Read-only tools are generally safe to allow by default.
Yes. Add a rate_limit block to the news.hn-search rule in your PolicyLayer policy. For example, setting max: 10 and window: 60 limits the tool to 10 calls per minute. Rate limits are tracked per agent session and reset automatically.
Set action: deny in the PolicyLayer policy for news.hn-search. The AI agent will receive a policy violation error and cannot call the tool. You can also include a reason field to explain why the tool is blocked.
news.hn-search is provided by the MCP server (@2sio/mcp). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.
Every MCP server has a record like this.
Type a name, get the same breakdown: verified identity, auth posture, risk grade, capabilities, recommended policy.
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