hn-hiring-trends-mcp
Which skills are tech companies hiring for, and which are rising? An MCP server that reads every Hacker News "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" thread (one per month, 250–500 job posts each) and turns them into skill demand trends, remote and salary stats, and searchable job posts.
No API keys. One line to install.
You: Which skills gained the most demand on HN hiring threads this year?
Claude: [rising_skills(months=12)]
• "AI agents" went from 11.3% to 14.7% of job posts (+3.4 pts); in
September 2026 alone it was in 17.4% of posts.
• Python +2.5 pts, LLM +2.1 pts.
• Frontend fell 4.3 pts and React 2.7 pts.
Summarized from real tool output: Oct 2025–Sep 2026, 3,788 job posts.
Why
| You want to know | Without it | With hn-hiring-trends |
|---|---|---|
| Is Rust (or Go, or Elixir) worth learning? | Gut feeling, hype on X | skill_demand shows its share of job posts, month by month |
| What's rising in tech hiring | Read 400 posts a month | rising_skills ranks ~70 skills by change |
| Who's hiring remote Rust devs with visa sponsorship | Ctrl-F across threads | search_jobs(["Rust"], remote_only=True, visa_only=True) |
| What a senior engineer earns | Scattered posts | hiring_snapshot gives median and middle-half salary from stated ranges |
How it works
flowchart LR
C[Claude / MCP client] -->|tool call| S[hn-hiring-trends-mcp]
S --> A[HN Algolia API: monthly threads + all top-level job posts]
A --> P[Parse: company, remote/hybrid/onsite, visa, salary range]
P --> K[Skill matching: ~70 tuned patterns, or any phrase you pass]
K -->|shares, trends, matching posts| C
A post "mentions" a skill once no matter how often it repeats it, so shares are "% of job posts asking for X". Ambiguous words get tuned rules: Go doesn't match "go-to-market", C doesn't match "Series C", Java doesn't match "JavaScript". Past months never change and are cached on disk (~/.cache/hn-hiring-trends).
Install
Requires uv.
Claude Code
claude mcp add hn-hiring-trends -- uvx hn-hiring-trends-mcp
Claude Desktop / Cursor (claude_desktop_config.json / .cursor/mcp.json)
{
"mcpServers": {
"hn-hiring-trends": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": ["hn-hiring-trends-mcp"]
}
}
}
Tools
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
hiring_snapshot | One month: post count, remote/hybrid/onsite and visa shares, salary medians, top skills |
skill_demand | % of posts mentioning each of 1–10 skills, month by month, with the change |
rising_skills | Biggest gainers and losers among ~70 skills (recent half vs earlier half of the period) |
search_jobs | Posts mentioning all your terms; filter remote-only or visa; returns company, header, salary, link |
hiring_threads | The monthly threads available |
Prompts: monthly_hiring_report (a shareable monthly summary), skill_outlook ("should I learn X, Y or Z?").
Try these
- "Should I learn Rust, Go or Elixir? Use 18 months of HN hiring data."
- "Write this month's HN hiring report."
- "Find remote Python jobs that mention LLMs and sponsor visas."
- "What's the median salary in posts that mention Kubernetes?"
Limits
- One slice of the market: HN skews toward startups, remote work and US/EU tech.
- Skill matching is keyword-based; context like "nice to have" is not separated from "required".
- Salaries are parsed from stated yearly ranges only (about a quarter of posts state one).
Part of the keyless MCP series
Open-source MCP servers that answer one market question each, with public data and no API keys.
| Server | Question it answers |
|---|---|
| review-miner-mcp | What do users hate about competitor apps and games? (App Store + Steam reviews) |
| pricing-time-machine-mcp | How did a SaaS pricing page change over the years? (Wayback Machine) |
| hn-hiring-trends-mcp (this one) | Which skills are tech companies hiring for, and which are rising? (HN Who is hiring) |
| model-price-radar-mcp | What does each LLM cost, and did it get cheaper? (OpenRouter + price history) |
| launch-detector-mcp | What is a company about to launch? (certificate transparency logs) |
Development
uv sync --extra dev
uv run pytest # offline tests with a mocked Algolia API
uv run python scripts/smoke_live.py # live check against hn.algolia.com
uv run --with rich python scripts/demo.py 12 # terminal demo (vhs docs/demo.tape records the GIF)
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv run hn-hiring-trends-mcp # click-through UI
MIT © Ali Altunar