Lobsters

Lobsters is a technology-focused link aggregation and community discussion platform. Its public REST API provides access to stories, comments, tags, and user profiles, returning JSON representations of community-submitted technology links, ranked and filtered by the community.

Lobsters publishes 4 APIs on the APIs.io network, including Comments API, Stories API, Tags API, and 1 more. Tagged areas include Link Aggregation, Community, Technology, News, and Stories.

The Lobsters catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Lobsters’ developer surface includes GitHub presence and 10 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

29.2/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 20/100 agent aware Front door AI 3/6 light Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-25 · rubric v0.23.0

AccessFree

1 APIs

Link AggregationCommunity Technology News Stories Comments Tags

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-25 · rubric v0.23.0

Composite quality — 29.2/100 · thin

Contract Quality 10.9 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 1.6 / 17

Access Clarity 4.6 / 17

Operational Transparency 1.7 / 11

Contract Governance 1.0 / 10

Discoverability 4.9 / 9

Regulatory Posture 2.5 / 15

Agent readiness — 20/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 6 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 9 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 4 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics does not apply to this provider. The published contracts declare no write operations, and a read-only API cannot create-or-update. The facet is excluded from this provider's denominator entirely — not scored zero. A reference or data API is not deficient for being unable to upsert.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/lobsters: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

APIs 4

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Lobsters Comments API

Community discussion comments on stories

Lobsters Stories API

Technology link aggregation stories submitted by the community

Lobsters Tags API

Community-maintained taxonomy tags for categorizing stories

Lobsters Users API

Lobsters user profiles

Open Collections 5

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

API Collection

OPEN COLLECTION

Lobsters Comments API

OPEN COLLECTION

Lobsters Comments Stories API

OPEN COLLECTION

Lobsters Comments Tags API

OPEN COLLECTION

Lobsters Comments Users API

OPEN COLLECTION

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Plans

1 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Rate Limits

0 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Lobsters Context

23 classes · 0 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Lobsters API Rules

5 rules · 4 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 4

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

Comment

14 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Story

12 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Tag

8 properties

JSON SCHEMA

User

11 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Examples 4

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

Comment

14 fields

EXAMPLE

Story

12 fields

EXAMPLE

Tag

8 fields

EXAMPLE

User

10 fields

EXAMPLE

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Lobsters Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Lobsters Vulnerability Disclosure

security.txt · contact published

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Lobsters Agentic Access

8 operations

8 operations · 0 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

ContributionGuide

ContributionGuide

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHub

GitHub

Access & Security 3

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

SecurityPolicy

SecurityPolicy

VulnerabilityDisclosure

VulnerabilityDisclosure

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 1

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

IssueTracker

IssueTracker

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

About

About

Other 2

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Tags

Source (apis.yml)

aid: lobsters
name: Lobsters
description: Lobsters is a technology-focused link aggregation and community discussion platform. Its public REST API provides
  access to stories, comments, tags, and user profiles, returning JSON representations of community-submitted technology links,
  ranked and filtered by the community.
deliveryModel:
  model: unknown
  license_evidence:
    repo: lobsters/lobsters
    spdx: NOASSERTION
    stars: 4842
  open_source: unknown
  commercial: true
  callable_host: true
  label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
  confidence: low
  source:
  - openapi
  - pricing
  - repository-unlicensed
  generated: '2026-09-25'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Free
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/lobsters.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lobsters/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-06-13'
modified: '2026-06-13'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
type: Index
tags:
- Link Aggregation
- Community
- Technology
- News
- Stories
- Comments
- Tags
apis:
- aid: lobsters:lobsters-comments-api
  name: Lobsters Comments API
  description: Community discussion comments on stories
  humanURL: https://lobste.rs
  tags:
  - Comments
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/lobsters-comments-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lobsters/refs/heads/main/plans/plans.yml
  - type: RateLimits
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lobsters/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/rate-limits.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lobsters/refs/heads/main/finops/finops.yml
- aid: lobsters:lobsters-stories-api
  name: Lobsters Stories API
  description: Technology link aggregation stories submitted by the community
  humanURL: https://lobste.rs
  tags:
  - Stories
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/lobsters-stories-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lobsters/refs/heads/main/plans/plans.yml
  - type: RateLimits
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lobsters/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/rate-limits.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lobsters/refs/heads/main/finops/finops.yml
- aid: lobsters:lobsters-tags-api
  name: Lobsters Tags API
  description: Community-maintained taxonomy tags for categorizing stories
  humanURL: https://lobste.rs
  tags:
  - Tags
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/lobsters-tags-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lobsters/refs/heads/main/plans/plans.yml
  - type: RateLimits
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lobsters/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/rate-limits.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lobsters/refs/heads/main/finops/finops.yml
- aid: lobsters:lobsters-users-api
  name: Lobsters Users API
  description: Lobsters user profiles
  humanURL: https://lobste.rs
  tags:
  - User
  tags_raw:
  - Users
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/lobsters-users-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lobsters/refs/heads/main/plans/plans.yml
  - type: RateLimits
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lobsters/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/rate-limits.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lobsters/refs/heads/main/finops/finops.yml
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.lobste.rs/
- type: IssueTracker
  url: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/issues
- type: SecurityPolicy
  url: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/blob/main/SECURITY.md
- type: ContributionGuide
  url: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/lobsters-agentic-access.yml
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/lobsters-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/lobsters-domain-security.yml
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters
- type: About
  url: https://lobste.rs/about
- type: Tags
  url: https://lobste.rs/tags
- type: RSS
  url: https://lobste.rs/rss
maintainers:
- FN: API Evangelist
  url: https://apievangelist.com
  email: info@apievangelist.com

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