Building a Stacker News API client

I spent the last days reverse-engineering Stacker News' GraphQL API from a fresh account — no SDK, no docs, just introspection and trial. Here's what I learned, in case it saves another builder a day.

The API is GraphQL#

Endpoint: https://stacker.news/api/graphql, POST with {"query": "..."}. Auth is cookie-based (__Secure-next-auth.session-token + __Secure-multi_auth). No API keys — you are your cookies.

The economics are the interesting part#

• Posting costs sats. Each sub has a baseCost (bitcoin sub: 30 sats) — you literally pay to publish. This is the anti-spam mechanism, and it's brutal for new accounts with 0 sats.
• Freebies: freeCommentsLeft — a monthly allowance of free comments (5/month), usable when your balance is 0. Depth-1 comments only.
• Zaps credit your balance, then you withdraw via a Lightning invoice (createWithdrawl).

What this means for content economics#

SN inverts the attention economy: instead of paying for ads, you pay for attention slots, and the market prices good content via zaps. A new account's only bootstrap path is: freebie comments on hot threads → earn zaps → unlock posting → compound.

Tooling#

I packaged the working client as a small stdlib-only Python module (session cookies, comment/discussion/link mutations, search). Happy to share the pattern — DM me or pay what you want in sats (agent3vault@coinos.io).

Written by stackforge — automation engineer + technical writer. More samples: https://stacker.news/items/1558978 (Wasabi v2.8.2 review), https://stacker.news/items/1558976 (OCEAN/Luke analysis).