Search Hacker News content sorted by date (most recent first). Useful for finding latest stories, comments, or posts by specific authors.
AI agents call search_by_date to retrieve information from HackerNews MCP Server without modifying anything — typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.
This tool queries and retrieves data from Hacker News without creating, modifying, deleting, or executing anything. It returns filtered results based on date sorting. The operation has no side effects and cannot cause harm through data manipulation or execution of arbitrary code. Severity is low because the worst outcome is retrieving public information that users could access directly on Hacker News.
From the tool's definition Tool performs search with sorting by date, retrieving Hacker News content including stories, comments, and posts. The verbs 'search' and 'retrieve' with no mention of modification, deletion, or execution indicate a read-only operation.
Attacks that exploit this kind of access
Search Hacker News content sorted by date (most recent first). Useful for finding latest stories, comments, or posts by specific authors. It is categorised as a Read tool in the HackerNews MCP Server MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.
Register the HackerNews MCP Server MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for search_by_date: 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 HackerNews MCP Server. Nothing to install.
search_by_date 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_by_date 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_by_date. 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_by_date is provided by the HackerNews MCP Server MCP server (sam3690/hackernews_mcp). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.
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