API Documentation

Overview

The Clap Ideas public API gives anyone read-only access to published ideas — no API key, no account, and no authentication required.

Base URL: https://clapideas.com/api/v1/public

All access is free and subject to fair use. For the full rules on rate limits, prohibited uses, and what happens if access is suspended, see the API & Developer Terms.

Endpoints

Every endpoint below is read-only, requires no authentication, and returns only published ideas — draft, hidden, and moderated content is never exposed.

GET /api/v1/public/ideas — List published ideas

Returns a paginated page of published ideas as JSON, ordered by relevance.

Results are always ordered by relevance first, then recency — highest total relevance score, ties broken by the newest creation date. This ordering is fixed and cannot be changed with a query parameter.

Query parameters

Example request

curl "https://clapideas.com/api/v1/public/ideas?page_size=5"

Example response (abbreviated)

{
  "count": 128,
  "next": "https://clapideas.com/api/v1/public/ideas?page=2&page_size=5",
  "previous": null,
  "results": [
    {
      "id": "0199f1a2-6b3c-7d1e-9a4f-1234567890ab",
      "title": "Solar-Powered Water Purification Kiosks",
      "summary": "A modular, off-grid kiosk that purifies local water sources using solar power.",
      "maturity_level": "lab_candidate",
      "feasibility_label": "near_future",
      "risk_level": "medium",
      "category": { "id": "...", "slug": "environment", "name": "Environment" },
      "tags": [{ "id": "...", "slug": "clean-water", "name": "clean-water" }],
      "author_handle": "ada_dev",
      "scores": {
        "community": 68.4,
        "ai_quality": 74.0,
        "innovation": 81.2,
        "pathway_strength": 60.5,
        "action": 55.0,
        "knowledge": 70.3,
        "risk": 40.0,
        "total_relevance": 72.9
      },
      "published_at": "2026-05-12T14:03:22Z",
      "created_at": "2026-05-10T09:11:04Z"
    }
  ]
}

GET /api/v1/public/ideas/<uuid> — Get a single idea

Returns one published idea, in the same shape as an item in the list response above.

Replace the id in the path with the idea's id, as returned by the list endpoint.

Returns a 404 response if the idea does not exist or is not published — this endpoint never reveals whether a draft or hidden idea exists.

Example request

curl "https://clapideas.com/api/v1/public/ideas/0199f1a2-6b3c-7d1e-9a4f-1234567890ab"

Example response (abbreviated)

{
  "id": "0199f1a2-6b3c-7d1e-9a4f-1234567890ab",
  "title": "Solar-Powered Water Purification Kiosks",
  "summary": "A modular, off-grid kiosk that purifies local water sources using solar power.",
  "maturity_level": "lab_candidate",
  "feasibility_label": "near_future",
  "risk_level": "medium",
  "category": { "id": "...", "slug": "environment", "name": "Environment" },
  "tags": [{ "id": "...", "slug": "clean-water", "name": "clean-water" }],
  "author_handle": "ada_dev",
  "scores": {
    "community": 68.4,
    "ai_quality": 74.0,
    "innovation": 81.2,
    "pathway_strength": 60.5,
    "action": 55.0,
    "knowledge": 70.3,
    "risk": 40.0,
    "total_relevance": 72.9
  },
  "published_at": "2026-05-12T14:03:22Z",
  "created_at": "2026-05-10T09:11:04Z"
}

GET /api/v1/public/stats — Aggregate stats

Returns platform-wide totals only — the number of published ideas and the number of community up-votes cast on them. No per-row data and no personal information.

Example request

curl "https://clapideas.com/api/v1/public/stats"

Example response (abbreviated)

{
  "total_published_ideas": 128,
  "total_votes": 342
}

CSV export

Add export=csv to the list endpoint to download every published idea as a single CSV file instead of a paginated JSON page. The file is UTF-8 with a byte-order mark, so it opens correctly in Excel.

Because a CSV export returns the entire dataset in one response, it uses a stricter rate limit than the JSON endpoints — see Rate limits below.

Example request

curl -o clap-ideas-export.csv "https://clapideas.com/api/v1/public/ideas?export=csv"

Example response (abbreviated)

"id","title","summary","maturity_level","feasibility_label","risk_level","category_slug","category_name","tags","author_handle","score_community","score_ai_quality","score_innovation","score_pathway_strength","score_action","score_knowledge","score_risk","score_total_relevance","published_at","created_at"

Rate limits

Requests are rate-limited per anonymous client, with two independent budgets:

• 30 requests per minute for the JSON list, detail, and stats endpoints.
• 6 requests per minute for the CSV export (export=csv).

Exceeding a limit returns a 429 Too Many Requests response with a Retry-After header giving the number of seconds until the limit resets.

Atom feeds

For a push-friendly alternative to polling the JSON endpoints, Clap Ideas also publishes read-only Atom feeds of newly published ideas:

• /feeds/ideas.atom — Every newly published idea, site-wide.
• /feeds/labs/<slug> — Newly published ideas in one lab — replace the slug with the lab's URL slug, for example environment.
• Per-author feeds are opt-in: a member's ideas only appear at their feed URL once they turn on public feeds in their profile settings.

Related

Full usage rules — fair use, prohibited uses, and what happens if access is suspended — live in the API & Developer Terms. For every other public policy, see the Legal Centre.