Hacker News Has a Free Firebase API — Track What Developers Are Talking About

import requests
from collections import Counter

# Get top 50 stories
top_ids = requests.get(
    "https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/topstories.json"
).json()[:50]

words = []
for sid in top_ids:
    story = requests.get(
        f"https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/{sid}.json"
    ).json()
    title = story.get("title", "")
    score = story.get("score", 0)
    words.extend(title.lower().split())
    if score > 100:
        print(f"🔥 [{score}] {title}")

# What words appear most in top stories?
common = Counter(words).most_common(15)
print("\nTrending words:", [w for w, c in common if len(w) > 3])

# Track "Who is Hiring?" threads
import requests

user = requests.get(
    "https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/whoishiring.json"
).json()

for item_id in user["submitted"][:5]:
    item = requests.get(
        f"https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/{item_id}.json"
    ).json()
    print(f"{item.get('title', 'N/A')} — {item.get('descendants', 0)} comments")