Search Hacker News stories and comments. Returns matching content with relevance scores.
AI agents call search_hn to retrieve information from HN-MCP without modifying anything — typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.
This tool performs a search query against Hacker News data and returns results. It has no side effects—it does not create, modify, delete, or execute any operations. The core function is data retrieval, which is the definition of the Read category. The low severity reflects that searching public Hacker News data poses minimal risk even if misused by an AI agent.
From the tool's definition Tool name 'search_hn' and description 'Search Hacker News stories and comments. Returns matching content with relevance scores' indicate a query operation that retrieves data without modifying or executing anything.
Documented attack patterns abuse exactly the kind of access search_hn gives an agent:
PolicyLayer is an MCP gateway — it sits between your AI agents and HN-MCP, and nothing reaches the server without passing your rules. This is the rule we recommend for search_hn:
{
"version": "1",
"default": "deny",
"tools": {
"search_hn": {}
}
}search_hn is read-only, so it stays allowed — but everything else on the server is denied unless you say otherwise.
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Search Hacker News stories and comments. Returns matching content with relevance scores. It is categorised as a Read tool in the HN-MCP MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.
Register the HN- MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for search_hn: 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 HN-MCP. Nothing to install.
search_hn 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 search_hn 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 search_hn. 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.
search_hn is provided by the HN- MCP server (karanb192/hn-mcp). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.
Start from HN-MCP, add the rest of your stack, and see everything your agents can call. Then put policy on all of it.
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5 HN-MCP tools catalogued and risk-classified — across an index of 43,000+ MCP servers.