# Stanford University

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/stanford/  
**Website:** https://www.stanford.edu/  
**APIs profiled:** 15

Stanford University is a private research university in Stanford, California. Unusually for a higher-education institution, essentially its entire programmable footprint is genuinely institution-operated rather than a vendor tenancy: every surface listed here runs on a stanford.edu host. Stanford Libraries (SUL-DLSS) publishes five first-party OpenAPI contracts for the Stanford Digital Repository — SDR, DOR Services, Technical Metadata, Preservation Catalog and SURI, 76 operations, Apache 2.0, on its own GitHub org — though the services themselves sit on the internal network. Public and open without credentials are PURL (XML/MODS/IIIF Presentation 2.1 off purl.stanford.edu), the Library Hours JSON:API, and the Registrar's ExploreCourses XML query interface, which reports its own deprecation in every response body. University IT runs the certificate-gated MaIS Registry web services (Account, Person, Student, CourseClass, Privilege, Workgroup) and a metered AI API Gateway keyed to a Stanford billing account. Stanford also publishes signed Shibboleth SAML 2.0 identity-provider metadata at idp.stanford.edu — machine-readable identity federation that most universities never get catalogued. What is missing is equally clear: no OAI-PMH provider was found on any Stanford host, no institution-operated open-data portal, no OAuth scopes, no contact or terms in any contract, no examples on any of the 76 operations, and no unified developer portal spanning the Libraries and University IT surfaces.

## Kin Score — 50.6 / 100 (developing)

Scored 2026-08-20 under rubric 0.12.0. Trend: rising (+25.5 from 25.1).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 64.8 |
| Contract Quality | 57.1 |
| Governance | 3.8 |
| Contract Governance | 3.8 |
| Operational Transparency | 26.3 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 36.9 |
| Commercial Clarity | 57.9 |
| Access Clarity | 57.9 |

Regulatory layer — **Education & Research**: 74.1 (matched via tags).

## Agent readiness — 36.8 (agent-ready)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | yes |
| Agentic Access | no |
| Reversibility Documented | no |
| MCP Server | no |
| Auth Clarity | yes |
| Idempotency | no |
| Error Semantics | verified |
| OpenAPI Examples | partial |
| Rate Limit Signal | documented |
| Event Surface Described | no |
| Agent Skills | no |
| Well Known Catalog | no |
| Consent Identity | no |
| Agent Card | no |
| Dry Run Mode | no |

## Access

Mixed — open library data, gated administrative and AI surfaces — onboarding: unknown, pricing: free, trial: no (confidence: high).

## APIs (15)

- **Stanford Libraries PURL API** — Persistent URLs into the Stanford Digital Repository. GET /{druid} returns HTML, /{druid}.xml returns the cocina publicObject document, /{druid}.mods returns MODS 3.7. Open, no ...
- **Stanford Libraries IIIF API** — IIIF Presentation (v2.1 stable, v3 alpha) and Image v2 APIs over the Stanford Digital Repository. Manifests served from purl.stanford.edu, image tiles from stacks.stanford.edu. ...
- **Stanford Libraries Library Hours API** — Operating hours for 24 Stanford library locations, answered as a JSON:API document at library-hours.stanford.edu/libraries.json. Open, no credential. Verified live 2026-08-19.
- **Stanford Libraries Digital Stacks API** — File and image delivery for Stanford Digital Repository content, served from stacks.stanford.edu. Documentation verified live 2026-08-19; access to individual files follows each...
- **Stanford Libraries Embed API** — oEmbed-style service returning an embeddable viewer for a Stanford Digital Repository object. Documentation verified live 2026-08-19.
- **SDR API** — Stanford Digital Repository deposit API. First-party OpenAPI 3.0.0 published by SUL-DLSS under Apache 2.0; 7 paths, 8 operations, bearer auth. Servers are sdr-api-{env}.stanford...
- **DOR Services API** — The backend API for the Stanford Digital Repository, and the largest contract Stanford publishes — OpenAPI 3.1.2, 40 paths, 53 operations, Apache 2.0, bearer auth. Validates wri...
- **Preservation Catalog HTTP API** — Tracks the preservation state of Stanford Digital Repository objects (moab layout). First-party OpenAPI 3.0.0, Apache 2.0, 7 paths, 8 operations, bearer auth. Servers are preser...
- **Technical Metadata API** — Technical (format, characterization) metadata for Stanford Digital Repository files. First-party OpenAPI 3.0.0, Apache 2.0, 3 paths, 3 operations, 14 component schemas. Declares...
- **SURI API** — Stanford Uniform Resource Identifier service — mints the druids every other SDR surface keys on. First-party OpenAPI 3.0.0, Apache 2.0, 3 paths, 4 operations, and an in-contract...
- **ExploreCourses course-data XML query interface** — The Registrar's course catalog, queryable as XML by appending view=xml-20140630 to a search. Open, no credential, and the largest genuinely public dataset Stanford serves — a si...
- **Stanford Identity Provider — SAML 2.0 metadata** — Signed Shibboleth SAML 2.0 identity-provider metadata, entityID https://idp.stanford.edu/, valid until 2027-08-16. Declares an IDPSSODescriptor, three SSO bindings (HTTP-POST, H...
- **Stanford AI API Gateway** — Direct API access to the large language models hosted in Stanford's own cloud infrastructure behind the AI Playground, for faculty, staff and students building their own AI appl...
- **MaIS Registry APIs** — University IT's Registry web services — Account, Person, Student, CourseClass, Privilege and Workgroup — over Stanford's consolidated system of record. Documented publicly but g...
- **CAP / Stanford Profiles API** — API over the Community Academic Profiles directory (18,000+ faculty, students, postdocs and staff). The interactive console at cap.stanford.edu/cap-api/console redirects to auth...

## Security (3)

- **Stanford Authentication** — 0 schemes
- **Stanford Domain Security** — TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DNSSEC · DMARC
- **Stanford Trust Center** — HIPAA, GDPR

## Plans (1)

- **Stanford Plans Pricing**

## Tags

University, Higher Education, Education, Research, United States, California, Private Research University, Association of American Universities, Research Repository, Course Catalog, Identity Federation, Library, Digital Repository, Artificial Intelligence, IIIF

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Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/stanford/). Scores are computed from the provider's own public artifacts under a published rubric.