The five envelopes · APIs
APIs — the web's machine door
An API is how software answers over the wire: a set of HTTP endpoints a program — or an agent — can call to get things done, described by a written contract (an OpenAPI spec) that says exactly which doors exist and what each one expects.
For agents, the spec is everything. A human can read docs and improvise; an agent needs the contract stated precisely. That's why this envelope is built from published specs, not from marketing pages — if a vendor declares their machine door, we fetch the declaration, validate it, and index what it actually says.
What “verified” means here
An API record is static-verified when its declared spec was fetched and machine-validated — the contract parses, the operations are real declarations. We deliberately do NOT ping API roots and call that verification: a 200 from a homepage proves nothing about the contract. Officialness means the spec is served from the provider's own domain.
Honest tiers, always: “not yet verified” is never “failed”. Full methodology →
Looking for something specific? Ask from the homepage or hit /api/answer?q=… — one verified answer, or an honest no.