Craigslistcraigslist.org
Craigslist's API contract itself is a genuine strength — the machine-readable spec is solid, giving partners a reliable foundation to build on. However, two areas are severely undermining partner program outcomes: developer experience (no self-service portal, no changelogs, thin descriptions, no code samples) and agent usability/understanding (no runnable collections, no rate-limit or pagination guidance, no agent instruction files or structured docs metadata).
API DesignA clean, typed, well-governed API contract agents can reason about4 pass1 warn0 fail94A+
| Signal | Points | Findings | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pass | Schema coverage & depthvia sdk | 25/25 | package.json "types" → ./dist/index.d.ts. Investigated: sdk 100%, spec 67%. | Typed, complete request/response schemas are what make agent function-calling possible. |
| pass | Auth declared & discoverablevia spec | 25/25 | Authentication required (global or on every operation). Investigated: spec 100%, docs 100%, wellknown 0%. | Agents can only authenticate when auth is declared, scoped, and discoverable. |
| warn | Machine-readable, versioned contractvia spec | 18.8/25 | info.version="v1" set but no versioning scheme (URL / header / media type) detected. Investigated: spec 75%, docs 50%. | A current OpenAPI version with a declared versioning scheme lets agents reason about the contract. |
| pass | Security & governance hygienevia spec | 15/15 | No credential-shaped strings detected in spec. Investigated: spec 100%, wellknown 100%. | No leaked secrets, no critical lint violations, no OWASP API Top-10 spec smells, and a published vulnerability-disclosure channel. |
| pass | Example coveragevia spec | 10/10 | 65% example coverage (target 80%+). Investigated: spec 100%, sdk 100%, docs 0%. | Examples carry shape semantics schemas under-specify — for humans and agents alike. |
Developer ExperienceThe context both developers and agents need to integrate fast — onboarding, code samples, complete descriptions and worked examples0 pass1 warn4 fail43F
| Signal | Points | Findings | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| warn | Quickstart presentvia docs | 12.5/25 | Quickstart page reachable (12 variants scanned starting at https://www.craigslist.org/about/help/) but no runnable code sample detected in HTML or .md variant. Investigated: docs 50%. | A quickstart is the fastest path from landing page to first successful call. |
| fail | Self-service developer portalvia docs | 0/29 | No signup page detected across conventional paths (/signup, /sign-up, /register, /get-started, /console/signup, /dashboard/signup, /try, /try-free, /free, /free-trial, /start, /start-free). Investigated: docs 0%. | Self-serve key/account creation is the fast first call for partners, with no sales gate. |
| fail | Code samples in docsvia docs | 0/18 | No detectable code samples across 1 sampled docs pages. Investigated: docs 0%. | Multi-language samples shorten time-to-first-call. |
| fail | Description completenessvia spec | 0/15 | 42% description completeness. Investigated: spec 0%. | Complete descriptions are the context humans and agents need to use endpoints. |
| fail | Changelog publishedvia spec | 0/13 | No changelog URL or mention found in spec metadata. Investigated: spec 0%, docs 0%, sdk 0%. | A published changelog lets partners track changes without surprise. |
Agent DiscoveryPartners and their agents can find your APIs — llms.txt, registries, crawlable and reachable docs0 pass4 warn0 fail65C
| Signal | Points | Findings | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| warn | Docs reachable, not hard auth-gatedvia docs | 22.5/30 | Server ignores Accept: text/markdown header (0/38 pages return markdown). Investigated: docs 75%. | Agents can only index and fetch docs they can reach — past auth gates and over correct HTTP semantics. |
| warn | Registry & SDK presencevia sdk | 14/28 | No MCP server, tool manifest, or list-tools capability is discoverable (server entrypoint: absent, tool manifest: unknown, list-tools: unknown). Investigated: sdk 50%, docs 0%, cli 0%. | Listing in MCP registries and publishing SDKs puts the API where agents and their tooling look. |
| warn | llms.txt present, valid & comprehensivevia docs | 10/30 | No llms.txt found at any candidate location (https://www.craigslist.org/about/bulk_posting_interface/llms.txt, https://www.craigslist.org/llms.txt, https://www.craigslist.org/docs/llms.txt); candidates redirected cross-host to https://sfbay.craigslist.org (agents can't follow cross-host redirects). Investigated: docs 33%, sdk 0%. | A valid, comprehensive llms.txt is the machine-readable entry point for agents. |
| warn | Crawlable / AEOvia wellknown | 9/12 | Sitemap present (810 entries) but carries no lastmod values. Investigated: wellknown 75%. | Bots allowed plus a fresh sitemap make docs findable by agent crawlers. |
Agent UnderstandingAgents can correctly interpret your APIs — machine-readable errors, consistent descriptions, structured data, parseable docs1 pass3 warn2 fail66C
| Signal | Points | Findings | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pass | Machine-readable errors (RFC 9457)via docs | 28/28 | Only 3 distinct 4xx/5xx codes documented (plus 0 "default" catch-all responses). Investigated: docs 100%, spec 50%, sdk 0%. | RFC 9457 problem details and a documented error-code inventory let agents parse failures without burning tokens. |
| warn | Agent-navigable, token-efficient docsvia docs | 15.7/22 | No pages support .md URLs (0/38 tested). Investigated: docs 71%. | Server-rendered, clean, small-footprint docs are what an agent can cheaply fetch and parse correctly. |
| warn | Operation purpose clarityvia spec | 12.5/25 | 86% of operations are agent-inferable (target 90%+). Investigated: spec 50%. | Agents select the right endpoint from its summary + operationId; clear, named operations make tool-selection reliable — the strongest driver of correct tool choice. |
| warn | Description consistency across surfaces | 1.4/7 | Mean pairwise description similarity across 2 surfaces (spec, docs) is 7% (threshold 35% for full credit). | Every surface tells the same story about what the product is. |
| fail | Agent instructions file (AGENTS.md)via wellknown | 0/10 | No AGENTS.md at the site root or /.well-known/. Investigated: wellknown 0%. | An AGENTS.md gives coding agents explicit setup, auth, and usage instructions to interpret and operate the API — beyond llms.txt's link index. |
| fail | Docs structured datavia docs | 0/8 | Neither JSON-LD nor OpenGraph/meta tags detected across 1 assessed pages (1 JS-rendered). Investigated: docs 0%. | Structured data (JSON-LD/schema.org) on docs pages gives agents an unambiguous parse target and is what answer engines cite. Detected on the JS-rendered head (Firecrawl) for a bounded page budget, so JS-injected JSON-LD is now caught; pages we can't render are excluded rather than failed. |
Agent UsabilityAgents have the context to use your APIs reliably, not just find them2 pass0 warn3 fail59D
| Signal | Points | Findings | Rationale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pass | Idempotency documentedvia sdk | 27/27 | Built-in retry machinery is present (grep-derived). Investigated: sdk 100%, spec 0%, docs 0%. | Documented idempotency lets agents retry safely. |
| pass | Sandbox separationvia spec | 20/20 | sandbox documented in the docs site at https://www.craigslist.org/about/help/. Investigated: spec 100%, docs 100%, sdk 50%. | An isolated environment lets agents exercise destructive operations safely. |
| fail | Rate-limit signalingvia spec | 0/22 | No rate-limit response headers documented. Investigated: spec 0%, docs 0%. | Machine-readable rate-limit headers let agents throttle adaptively. |
| fail | Pagination documented & consistentvia spec | 0/22 | 1 list endpoint(s) exist but no pagination params found. Investigated: spec 0%, docs 0%. | Consistent, documented pagination lets agents traverse collections. |
| fail | Runnable collection with test scriptsvia platform | 0/9 | No public Postman workspace discovered for the org. Investigated: platform 0%. | A public, maintained collection with assertions is runnable truth agents validate against. |
Resources Discovered
The public resources we found for Craigslist — the evidence behind the score. All discovered from public sources; nothing here requires access to your systems.
| APIs analyzed | 1 — Craigslist Bulkpost API |
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