Shortwave

Shortwave is an AI-native email client that upgrades an existing Gmail or Google Workspace account with a reimagined inbox, built by former members of Google's Inbox team and backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Its AI assistant drafts and triages email, its AI-powered search answers natural-language questions across your mailbox, and it connects to external tools as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) client — Shortwave consumes MCP tool calls rather than publishing a public developer REST API. Data is hosted on Google Cloud with AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit, and the product undergoes annual CASA Tier 2 security audits, with SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliance available on request.

Shortwave is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Email, Email Client, Artificial Intelligence, and AI Assistant.

Shortwave’s developer surface includes documentation, engineering blog, pricing, signup flow, support, and 14 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

30.5/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 0/100 human only Front door AI 6/6 dominant Heartbeat 10/100 dormant saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessPaid

0 APIs

Company Email Email Client Artificial Intelligence AI Assistant Productivity MCP Gmail Google Workspace Collaboration

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 30.5/100 · thin

Contract Quality 0.0 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 4.5 / 17

Access Clarity 13.4 / 17

Operational Transparency 0.9 / 11

Contract Governance 1.9 / 10

Discoverability 4.1 / 9

Regulatory Posture 4.1 / 15

Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 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 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the AI & Biometrics 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 could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

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/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

Machine-Readable Contract +18 pts — api_specs includes an OpenAPI document
MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Agentic Access Contract +10 pts — agentic_access artifact present (x-agentic-access), graded by author
Machine-Readable Auth +10 pts — a served openid-configuration/oauth-authorization-server carrying `issuer` (served), else the securitySchemes class in the provider OpenAPIs — bound (mutualTLS, DPoP, Signature) > negotiable (oauth2 authorizationCode/clientCredentials, openIdConnect) > bearer (http bearer, apiKey)
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented)
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes

13 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Contract Quality scores 0.0 — up to +25.0 composite points
Developer Ergonomics scores 26.2 — up to +14.8 composite points
Operational Transparency scores 7.9 — up to +12.0 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

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 the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/shortwave/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/shortwave to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Standards implemented 1

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

tagged — the provider's own APIs.json carries the standard as a tag; implementation not verified

Shortwave API pricing

Prices published by Shortwave, read 2026-10-07 from www.shortwave.com/pricing/.

Plan	Price
Business	$30 per seat/ month Includes: Standard intelligence, 5 years AI search history, max 50 threads per AI search, 3 AI-powered filters
Premier	$45 per seat/ month Includes: Advanced intelligence, 2x more AI usage, unlimited AI search history, max 100 threads per AI search,
Max	$120 per seat/ month Includes: Expert intelligence, 6x more AI usage, max 150 threads per AI search, 50 AI-powered filters, 3x cont

Plan details, limits and sources →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Shortwave Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Security Posture 3

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

Shortwave Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

Shortwave Vulnerability Disclosure

security.txt · contact published

SECURITY

Shortwave Trust Center

SOC 2, GDPR

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 2

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

DeveloperPortal

DeveloperPortal

SignUp

SignUp

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

WellKnown

WellKnown

Design & Contract 1

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Conformance

Conformance

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

Access & Security 6

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

TrustCenter

TrustCenter

VulnerabilityDisclosure

VulnerabilityDisclosure

DomainSecurity

Security

SecurityTxt

Compliance

Operate 1

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Support

Support

Commercial 4

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Pricing

TermsOfService

PrivacyPolicy

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Source (apis.yml)

aid: shortwave
name: Shortwave
description: Shortwave is an AI-native email client that upgrades an existing Gmail or Google Workspace account with a reimagined
  inbox, built by former members of Google's Inbox team and backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Its AI assistant drafts
  and triages email, its AI-powered search answers natural-language questions across your mailbox, and it connects to external
  tools as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) client — Shortwave consumes MCP tool calls rather than publishing a public developer
  REST API. Data is hosted on Google Cloud with AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit, and the product undergoes
  annual CASA Tier 2 security audits, with SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliance available on request.
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: false
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: paid
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Paid
  confidence: low
  source:
  - plans
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://www.shortwave.com/og-image.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/shortwave/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- lightspeed-venture-partners
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-21'
tags:
- Company
- Email
- Email Client
- Artificial Intelligence
- AI Assistant
- Productivity
- MCP
- Gmail
- Google Workspace
- Collaboration
tags_raw:
- Company
- Email
- Email Client
- Artificial Intelligence
- AI Assistant
- Productivity
- Model Context Protocol
- Gmail
- Google Workspace
- Collaboration
apis: []
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/shortwave-plans-pricing.yml
- type: TrustCenter
  url: security/shortwave-trust-center.yml
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/shortwave-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/shortwave-domain-security.yml
- type: Security
  url: https://www.shortwave.com/.well-known/security.txt
- type: SecurityTxt
  url: well-known/shortwave-security.txt
- type: WellKnown
  url: well-known/shortwave-well-known.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/shortwave-conformance.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://www.shortwave.com
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://www.shortwave.com/docs/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://www.shortwave.com/docs/
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.shortwave.com/blog/
- type: Pricing
  url: https://www.shortwave.com/pricing/
- type: SignUp
  url: https://app.shortwave.com/
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://www.shortwave.com/policies/terms-of-service/
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://www.shortwave.com/policies/privacy-policy/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/shortwave
- type: Support
  url: mailto:support@shortwave.com
- type: Compliance
  url: https://www.shortwave.com/docs/guides/security/
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-21'
  status: enriched
  artifacts_added: 6
  pass: local-v1

Shortwave API — frequently asked questions

How much does the Shortwave API cost?

Shortwave publishes its prices; its Business plan is $30 per seat/ month as of 2026-10-07. APIs.io lists 3 pricing plans for Shortwave, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the Shortwave API ready for AI agents?

Shortwave has a Kin Score of 30.5 out of 100 (thin) and an Agent Readiness score of 0.0 (human-only), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

Work with this as data

Every provider here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.

MCP server

One button, every client — Claude, Cursor, VS Code and the rest.

https://apis.io/mcp

Tools for providers

9 MCP tools reach this

find_providersBrowse and filter every provider in the catalog.
get_provider_artifactsEvery artifact this provider publishes, grouped by type.
get_provider_operationsEvery operation across all of their OpenAPIs — one call instead of parsing every spec.
get_provider_toolsEvery MCP tool they ship, with the operation each wraps.
get_provider_evidenceHow each part of their score was established. Free — the basis for a claim should not sit behind it.
get_provider_ratingPRO — composite, band, trend and facet scores.
apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.

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Call it yourself

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This provider

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Every operation they expose

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/shortwave/operations?limit=25"

How their score was established

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/shortwave/evidence"

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