No. The Hacker News API is publicly accessible without authentication or rate limiting. Your Tars agent connects directly to the API endpoints. There are no credentials to manage, no OAuth flows, and no usage limits to worry about.

The agent uses the Search Posts endpoint powered by Algolia's HN search. It accepts full-text queries, optional tag filters (story, comment, ask_hn, show_hn), and pagination. Results include post titles, URLs, scores, and comment counts, ranked by relevance to your query.

Yes. The Get Item endpoint returns the full item including nested comment trees. You can control depth and breadth with max_depth and max_children parameters to keep responses manageable. The agent summarizes key discussion points rather than dumping the entire thread.

The API reflects live Hacker News data. Frontpage stories update as rankings change. Today's posts endpoint returns items from the current day. Search results include posts as soon as they are indexed by Algolia, typically within minutes of submission.

Yes. Configure your agent to periodically search HN for your company name, product name, or relevant keywords. The agent can alert your team when new matching posts appear, providing title, score, comment count, and a summary of the discussion. This is effective brand monitoring for the tech community.

Manual browsing means scanning dozens of stories, clicking into discussions, and losing time to interesting tangents. Your Tars agent filters by relevance, score thresholds, and specific topics, delivering only what matters to your team in a concise format through whatever chat channel you prefer.

Yes. Both the Search Posts and Get Latest Posts endpoints accept tag filters including 'show_hn', 'ask_hn', 'front_page', and author-specific tags. Your agent can focus exclusively on new product launches (Show HN) or community questions (Ask HN) based on your monitoring needs.

No. Tars fetches stories and comments in real time from the Hacker News API during each conversation. Post titles, URLs, and discussion content are used only to formulate the current response. Nothing from HN is cached or persisted in Tars after the conversation ends.