Track a two-word topic on Hacker News by month with SQL

Answer shape

Two hasToken predicates over the indexed text column and one GROUP BY return 45 monthly counts since January 2023. Measured 2026-09-09 through the public door: 1.23 s, 13,655,449 rows read, $0.0073 of machine time, $0 charged.

Sources

• Hacker News

Methods

• source-native SQL
• token-indexed lexical search
• time series

SQL

SELECT toStartOfMonth(original_timestamp) AS m, count() AS n
FROM hackernews.items
WHERE original_timestamp >= '2023-01-01'
  AND hasToken(search_text_lc, 'prompt')
  AND hasToken(search_text_lc, 'injection')
GROUP BY m ORDER BY m LIMIT 100;

Output, no account

scry.io/s/8mcfjc16 holds this query's rows and its envelope — elapsed, rows read, machine cost — frozen from a run through the public door.

Verification notes

• NoteTwo hasToken predicates AND together: an item counts when both tokens appear anywhere in its indexed text, in any order.
• NoteThe current month is partial; its count grows until the month closes.
• NoteFrozen output and envelope, no account: https://scry.io/s/8mcfjc16 (2026-09-09: 1.23 s, 13,655,449 rows read, $0.0073 machine cost, $0 charged).

Related sources