Search Hacker News stories by relevance. Returns stories matching the query, sorted by relevance score, points, and comment count.
AI agents call search_stories 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 performs a search query against publicly available Hacker News stories and returns matching results. It has no side effects on data—it only reads and retrieves information. The sorted results are computed display output, not a modification of underlying data. This is clearly within the Read category (search, list, get, fetch).
From the tool's definition Tool 'search_stories' retrieves and queries Hacker News content via the HN Algolia API. The description states it 'Returns stories matching the query' with sorting applied—this is a pure retrieval operation with no mention of modification, deletion, or…
Attacks that exploit this kind of access
Search Hacker News stories by relevance. Returns stories matching the query, sorted by relevance score, points, and comment count. 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_stories: 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_stories 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_stories 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_stories. 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_stories 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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