What causes "Failed to fetch new stories" in can1357/oh-my-pi?

Verify connectivity: curl -I https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/newstories.json, then retry.

Failed to fetch new stories

Error message

Failed to fetch new stories

What it means

Thrown by handleHackerNews when `loadPage` returns `ok: false` for the Firebase `newstories.json` endpoint while handling https://news.ycombinator.com/newest. Same failure semantics as the top-stories variant: transport error, non-2xx status, or unreadable body after user-agent rotation.

Source

Thrown at packages/coding-agent/src/web/scrapers/hackernews.ts:162

	try {
		const itemId = parsed.searchParams.get("id");

		if (itemId) {
			const item = await fetchItem(parseInt(itemId, 10), timeout, signal);
			if (!item) throw new Error(`Failed to fetch item ${itemId}`);

			content = await renderStory(item, timeout, 0, signal);
			notes.push(`Fetched HN item ${itemId} with top-level comments (depth 2)`);
		} else if (parsed.pathname === "/" || parsed.pathname === "/news") {
			const { content: raw, ok } = await loadPage(`${API_BASE}/topstories.json`, { timeout, signal });
			if (!ok) throw new Error("Failed to fetch top stories");
			const ids = tryParseJson<number[]>(raw);
			if (!ids) throw new Error("Failed to parse top stories");
			content = await renderListing(ids, timeout, "Hacker News - Top Stories", signal);
			notes.push("Fetched top 20 stories from HN front page");
		} else if (parsed.pathname === "/newest") {
			const { content: raw, ok } = await loadPage(`${API_BASE}/newstories.json`, { timeout, signal });
			if (!ok) throw new Error("Failed to fetch new stories");
			const ids = tryParseJson<number[]>(raw);
			if (!ids) throw new Error("Failed to parse new stories");
			content = await renderListing(ids, timeout, "Hacker News - New Stories", signal);
			notes.push("Fetched top 20 new stories");
		} else if (parsed.pathname === "/best") {
			const { content: raw, ok } = await loadPage(`${API_BASE}/beststories.json`, { timeout, signal });
			if (!ok) throw new Error("Failed to fetch best stories");
			const ids = tryParseJson<number[]>(raw);
			if (!ids) throw new Error("Failed to parse best stories");
			content = await renderListing(ids, timeout, "Hacker News - Best Stories", signal);
			notes.push("Fetched top 20 best stories");
		} else {
			return null;
		}

		return buildResult(content, { url, method: "hackernews", fetchedAt, notes });
	} catch (err) {
		const errorMsg = err instanceof Error ? err.message : String(err);

View on GitHub (pinned to 9690622007)

Solutions

Verify connectivity: curl -I https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/newstories.json, then retry.
Read the notes/error in the returned result block for the underlying transport error.
Use the Algolia HN API (search_by_date with tags=story) as a fallback for newest stories.
Increase the timeout if failures are timeouts.
Check proxy/firewall rules for Firebase hosting domains.

Example fix

// before
const res = await webFetch("https://news.ycombinator.com/newest");
// after: pre-check upstream health and degrade
const health = await fetch("https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/newstories.json", { method: "HEAD" });
if (!health.ok) return algoliaNewestFallback();
const res = await webFetch("https://news.ycombinator.com/newest");

Defensive patterns

Strategy: retry

Validate before calling

const probe = await fetch("https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/newstories.json", { method: "HEAD" });
if (!probe.ok) throw new Error(`HN Firebase unreachable: ${probe.status}`);

Try / catch

try {
  const res = await webFetch("https://news.ycombinator.com/newest");
} catch (err) {
  if (err instanceof ToolAbortError) throw err;
  // fall back to Algolia search_by_date
}

Prevention

HEAD-probe newstories.json before fetching /newest.
Retry once with backoff; Firebase glitches are transient.
Verify DNS resolution of hacker-news.firebaseio.com in the environment.
Keep an Algolia by-date fallback.
Raise timeout on slow links instead of disabling timeouts.

When it happens

Trigger: Calling web-fetch on https://news.ycombinator.com/newest when GET https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/newstories.json fails (network outage, DNS failure, HTTP error, blocked user agents).

Common situations: Firebase API outage; offline/air-gapped environment; DNS failure; rate limiting; firewall blocking Firebase hosting; transient timeout under slow networks.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of can1357/oh-my-pi@9690622007 (2026-08-31). Data as JSON: /api/errors/0852961160588045. Report an issue: GitHub.