api-anything README

The project's README from github.com/goodnight000/api-anything. As one markdown file: README.md.

API Anything

CI

Teach your agent a website once. After that, it calls the site like an API instead of driving a browser.

API Anything watches a site's own page make a request and learns which parts of it are your inputs. It saves the result as an operation. Your agent calls that operation with new inputs over MCP, the CLI or TypeScript, and gets JSON back over plain HTTP.

Two agents race on the same Google Flights task: one drives Chrome, one calls API Anything

Same agent (Claude Opus 5.5), same prompt, started together. Left: it drives headless Chrome through Playwright MCP. Right: it calls API Anything's Google Flights operation. Shown at 3× speed with no cuts; the timers show real elapsed time. Recorded 2026-09-28. MP4 · how it was recorded

Median time and cost per task. 1 date: browser 12.9 s and $0.166, API Anything 8.4 s and $0.074. 5 dates: browser 41.6 s and $0.154, API Anything 21.1 s and $0.152.

Across 5 runs of each task, the agent using API Anything answered 1.5 to 2× sooner, read about half as many tokens, and cost the same or less. All 20 answers were correct. Method, raw numbers and limits.

Install

Paste this into Claude Code, Codex or another coding agent:

Set up API Anything for me: https://github.com/goodnight000/api-anything/blob/main/INSTALL.md

The agent checks Node 22.13+, builds and installs the api-anything command, confirms that a call works, then connects the MCP server and the skill to itself. Restart the agent, then ask it something like "What does Goodreads rate Piranesi?"

Install by hand

The package isn't on npm yet. Don't use npm install -g github:..., because it fails under npm 11.

git clone https://github.com/goodnight000/api-anything.git && cd api-anything
npm ci && npm install -g "$(npm pack --silent)"
api-anything call hacker-news search query=sqlite

{"ok":true,"class":"ok","tier":1,"data":[{"title":"Hosting SQLite databases on GitHub Pages or any static file hoster","url":"https://phiresky.github.io/blog/2021/hosting-sqlite-databases-on-github-pages/", ...}, ...],"ms":111}

tier: 1 means plain HTTP with no browser. A failure returns ok: false with a class, a reason and a next step. Connect an agent with codex mcp add api-anything -- api-anything mcp, claude mcp add --scope user api-anything -- api-anything mcp, or this MCP entry:

{ "mcpServers": { "api-anything": { "command": "api-anything", "args": ["mcp"] } } }

Over MCP an agent calls operations, using four tools: list_sites, list_operations, call_operation and login. To create operations, an agent needs a shell and the skill. Google Chrome is needed only for creating operations and for browser fallback. Setup details.

Teach it a new site

Give it the page URL with a placeholder, and two example inputs:

api-anything add hn-demo links \
  --trigger 'https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site={domain}' \
  --example domain=github.com --example2 domain=github.io --match path=/from \
  --html '{"items":"tr.athing","fields":{"title":".titleline > a","url":".titleline > a@href"}}'

api-anything call hn-demo links domain=arxiv.org      # 30 arxiv.org stories, tier 1

Headless Chrome loads the page once for each example. The part of the request that changed with the input becomes a parameter, and the rest is stored as a template. The agent (or you) picks the request and the fields. API Anything builds the template without an LLM. Recorded demos.

Map a site from an intent

Tell an agent what you need from a site. The skill makes it do this, in order:

  1. Ask about whatever the request leaves unclear.
  2. Propose operations and wait for your approval.
  3. Scout each page with capture --outline. This is a summary of what each request returns, so the agent doesn't have to read full responses.
  4. Build each operation and check it with an input that wasn't an example.

Goodreads has had no public API since 2020. One run took 6.3 minutes and $1.19. It produced search, book details, an author's books and reviews:

api-anything call goodreads searchBooks q=piranesi
api-anything call goodreads getBook bookId=50202953
Goodreads, median of 5 runs. 1 book: browser agent 16.8 s and $0.156, API Anything 14.4 s and $0.048. 5 books: browser 182.5 s and $0.122, API Anything 30.5 s and $0.107.

How it was explored, tested and compared.

What's included

22 read operations across 9 sites:

They cover selected features, not whole sites. api-anything ops <site> lists parameters and caveats.

How it works

Details · design

Sessions and logins

For a site that needs an account, api-anything login <site> first tries to import that site's cookies from a browser profile you are already signed in to, so there is usually no password to type. If several profiles are signed in it asks which one, and if none can be imported it opens a Chrome window to sign in by hand. A saved operation holds references to cookies and tokens, never their values, so a refreshed session works without re-learning anything.

A session is kept current where that is possible. Cookies a site sets on a plain-HTTP response, or while API Anything runs the site's page in Chrome, are saved. When a plain-HTTP call comes back unauthorized, API Anything makes one recovery attempt, the first of these that applies:

  1. re-import from the browser profile you chose at login;
  2. take the cookies from its own Chrome profile, if they differ from the saved ones;
  3. for a read that uses session tokens, reload the page so the site issues fresh ones.

If the call is still unauthorized, it returns class: "auth" with the login command to run.

Import reads Chrome, Arc, Brave, Edge, Chromium and Firefox profiles on macOS and Linux (on Linux, not cookies encrypted with the desktop keyring). On Windows, login opens the Chrome window. Details

Limits

All limits

Docs

Benchmark · Demos · Setup for agents · Reference · Design · Release checks · Contributing

MIT licensed.

api-anything (goodnight000/api-anything)

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Api-anything
What is this?API Anything watches a website's own frontend make a request, learns which parts are your inputs, and saves it as an operation. After that, your agent calls that operation over MCP, the CLI or TypeScript and gets plain JSON back instead of driving a headless browser.
Is this a hosted API or something I run myself?It's a local tool: a CLI plus an MCP server that runs on your own machine using your network and your browser sessions, not a hosted service.
How do I install and connect it to my coding agent?Paste the install snippet into Claude Code, Codex or another coding agent; it checks for Node 22.13+, builds and installs the api-anything command, then connects the MCP server and skill to itself. You can also add it manually with 'codex mcp add api-anything -- api-anything mcp' or 'claude mcp add --scope user api-anything -- api-anything mcp'.
Do I need Chrome or Node installed first?Yes — Node 22.13+ is required to build and run it, and Google Chrome is needed only for creating new operations and as a fallback when a plain HTTP call is blocked.
What happens if a site changes and breaks a saved operation?It re-learns the request and only saves the new version after a replay succeeds; if it still fails you get an error instead of someone else's data. There's no CAPTCHA solving, so if a site challenges real Chrome you have to clear it by hand.
Does it work the same on Windows as on macOS and Linux?Cookie import works on macOS and Linux across Chrome, Arc, Brave, Edge, Chromium and Firefox profiles (except keyring-encrypted cookies on Linux); on Windows, logging in just opens a Chrome window instead of importing cookies.
Where do my login sessions and credentials get stored?Credentials stay in ~/.api-anything, and saved operations hold only references to cookies and tokens, never the actual values, so a refreshed session keeps working without re-learning.
What sites and operations are bundled out of the box?It ships 22 read operations across 9 sites, including Google Flights, Hacker News, X, Instagram, YouTube, Airbnb, Amazon, LinkedIn and Goodreads.
How much faster is it than an agent driving a browser?In a Google Flights benchmark the same agent answered 1.5-2x sooner, read about half as many tokens, and cost the same or less; on Goodreads it answered 5 books in 30.5s versus 182.5s for a browser-driving agent.
How does it teach itself a new site?You give it a page URL with a placeholder and two example inputs; headless Chrome loads the page for each example, the part that changed becomes a parameter, and the rest becomes a template, all without using an LLM.
Can it write to a site, like sending a LinkedIn message?No write operations are bundled. Writes need an --allow-writes flag and have only been tested against a local fixture, not against real sites like LinkedIn.
What are similar projects?bb-browser, stagehand, oc, browser, reverse-api-engineer, webcmd, testsprite-cli, wigolo
Which topics is it in?playwright, web-scraping, browser-automation, local-first, mcp-server, codex, agent, claude-code, mcp, api, automation, ai-agents
Creator
goodnight000
Size
7 MB
Stars
1.2K
Updated
CommitOct 19
Age
23d
Commits · 90 Days