Hacker News Mentions Monitor: Keyword and Domain Alerts

A hacker news keyword monitor and hn brand mention alert in one actor. Give it keywords or a bare domain and get one row per matching Hacker News story or comment from the last N days, with the title, author, link, and (for stories) points. Turn on "only new since last run" to track hacker news mentions of a domain on a schedule, or run it as a new hacker news comments monitor. No API key. You pay per mention returned; a quiet day costs only the start fee.

This reads Algolia's public Hacker News Search API at request time. It is the same index the HN search box uses.

Who it's for

• Founders and comms teams who want to know when Hacker News is talking about their product, domain, or a competitor, without refreshing /newest by hand.
• Developer-tool marketers watching "Show HN" and comment threads for a category (LLMs, scrapers, a language, a cloud).
• Analysts and agents who need a structured mention feed for Clay, n8n, Make, or a spreadsheet.

Why this one

• Stories and comments, honestly shaped. Story hits carry points and numComments. Comment hits do not: those two fields are null on every comment row, because Algolia does not send them. Comment titles come from the parent story (story_title). This is a real shape difference, not a missing column.
• Only-new monitoring. Tick "Only return mentions that are new since the last run" and you are billed only for item ids this watchlist has not returned before. A run with nothing new is free besides the start fee.
• Domain search works. apify.com is a valid line, not only a keyword.
• No key, no proxy required. One JSON request per keyword and type (story / comment), paged until your cap.

What you get

One dataset row per mention by default ("One row per mention" is on). Story hits and comment hits share most columns; points and comment count are story-only:

Field	Story hit	Comment hit
title	The story title	The parent story's title (story_title)
url	The external URL, or the HN permalink if the story has none	The HN thread permalink (item?id=<story_id>)
points	The score	Always null (no points field on comment hits)
numComments	Number of comments on the story	Always null (no comment-count field on comment hits)
commentText	Always null	Plain text, first 500 characters
hnUrl	news.ycombinator.com/item?id=<objectID>	Same, for this comment
author, createdAt, objectID, type	Present	Present (type is comment)

query and scrapedAt are on every row. With monitoring on, isNew and firstSeenAt say whether that item id is new to the watchlist.

A keyword with zero matches comes back as "found": false and is never charged. A monitoring run that finds nothing new comes back as a found row with mentionCount 0 and is not charged for mentions.

How to use Hacker News Mentions Monitor: Keyword and Domain Alerts

1. In the Apify Console. Open the actor page and click Start — the queries field is already pre-filled with a working example. Results land in the run's dataset as soon as each item is found.
2. Via the API. Call it directly with a POST request — no Console needed once you have an API token:

   curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~hackernews-mentions-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
     -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"queries":["openai"]}'
   

3. On a schedule. Save this actor as an Apify Task with the input you want, then add a Schedule (hourly, daily, weekly) so it runs on its own — no server of your own required.

Input

{
  "queries": [
    "openai"
  ]
}

One search per line: a keyword, a phrase, or a bare domain such as apify.com. Each line is searched on Hacker News stories and/or comments. Accepted formats: openai, apify.com, "show hn".

queries is a list of keywords or bare domains. Optional: tags (stories, comments, or both; default both), sinceDays (default 7), minPoints (stories only; has no effect on comment hits), maxResults (default 100 per keyword), onlyNewSinceLastRun, deltaName.

Sample output

query	found	status	mentionCount	mentions	objectID	type	title	url	author	points	numComments	commentText	createdAt	hnUrl	isNew	firstSeenAt	scrapedAt
openai	true	OK		<all mentions (full list)>				<link>				<comment text (first 500 characters)>			<is this mention new?>		1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

Example runs

Three inputs that need no credentials of any kind and return rows as they stand. Paste one into the Input tab and press Start.

1. Watch Hacker News for a keyword (stories and comments, last 7 days)

{
  "queries": ["openai"]
}

2. Track two topics in one run

{
  "queries": ["openai", "python"],
  "maxResults": 20
}

3. New comments only, as a scheduled alert

{
  "queries": ["openai"],
  "tags": ["comment"],
  "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true,
  "maxResults": 25
}

Pricing

• Mention returned: $2 per 1,000 mentions

Plus a $0.002 start fee per run. Each event above is billed independently, only when it actually returns data — misses (found:false) are never charged.

Charged once per mention returned. A query with zero matches, or a monitoring run with nothing new, is never charged.

Use it from Clay, n8n, Make, or an AI agent

This actor runs synchronously over plain HTTP — call it directly from a script, a workflow tool, or an AI agent, no Apify Console needed once you have an API token.

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~hackernews-mentions-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"queries":["openai"]}'

n8n. Add an HTTP Request node: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~hackernews-mentions-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body Content Type JSON, JSON Body {"queries":["openai"]} (swap in an expression from an earlier node for a real value).

Clay. Add an "HTTP API" column: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~hackernews-mentions-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body {"queries":["{{search}}"]}, mapping the row's search into the queries array.

MCP. In Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client with the Apify MCP server, ask for "hacker news mentions monitor: keyword domain alerts" — the agent will find and run this actor.

vs. the alternatives

Hacker News scrapers on the Store dump newest/frontpage rows at a commodity per-row price and do not ship an only-new-since-last-run watchlist. This actor is a mention monitor: you name the keyword or domain, you get matching stories and comments, and a scheduled run bills only what is new.

FAQ

Why is points null on some rows? Those rows are comments. Hacker News comment hits have no points field and no comment-count field. Story hits carry both. The actor never fills them in from the parent story.

Does a domain search find comments that only mention the brand name? Yes, if the comment text or the parent title matches. A bare domain such as openai.com matches how Algolia indexes the URL and text; a company name such as openai usually matches more threads.

How far back does it go? sinceDays (default 7). Monitoring memory forgets an item id after 30 days without seeing it, so the named store stays small.