aid: hacker-news
name: Hacker News API Rules
description: >-
  Governance and operational rules for the Hacker News API published by
  Y Combinator and hosted on Firebase. The API is read-only and unauthenticated.
specificationVersion: '0.1'
rules:
  - name: read-only
    description: All endpoints are HTTP GET; mutation is not supported.
  - name: no-auth
    description: No API key, OAuth, or token is required.
  - name: rate-limits
    description: No published rate limit; clients should be courteous and use Firebase eventing where possible.
  - name: forward-compatibility
    description: Clients must ignore unknown fields returned by item or user objects.
  - name: data-source
    description: Backed by Firebase real-time database; endpoints expose JSON over HTTPS.
  - name: stable-base-url
    description: All endpoints live under https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/.