canonical: https://jentic.com/apis/buttondown.email/buttondown-buttondown

# Buttondown Email Buttondown API

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for Buttondown API, keeping it validated and agent-ready. Buttondown is a minimalist newsletter platform popular with writers and indie publishers. This curated spec exposes the core subscriber and email lifecycle - list, create, retrieve, update, and delete - for lightweight integrations. The companion buttondown-api spec covers the full surface when more resources are required.

## For AI agents

Manage Buttondown newsletters with a tight subscriber and email surface. Authenticate with a Token in the Authorization header.

## Scope

Does not handle transactional email, SMS, or marketing automation journeys - use for newsletter subscriber and email lifecycle management only.

## Capabilities

- Add new subscribers to a Buttondown newsletter
- Look up an individual subscriber by ID
- Update subscriber metadata such as tags or status
- Remove subscribers from the audience
- Draft newsletter emails programmatically
- Update or delete email drafts before they send

## Use cases

### Subscriber Lifecycle Sync

Mirror subscriber state between Buttondown and an external source of truth - a CRM, a billing system, or a community platform. Operators run hourly or daily syncs to keep the audience aligned and clean. POST and PATCH on /subscribers handle creation and updates respectively.

Example prompt: For each user marked active in the CRM, POST to /subscribers if missing, PATCH if metadata changed, and DELETE if the user has churned

### Newsletter Draft Pipeline

Build automated draft pipelines that compose newsletter content from blog posts, AI summaries, or analytics digests, then create the email in Buttondown for human review. Editors approve in the Buttondown UI before sending. Saves 20-30 minutes of manual drafting per issue.

Example prompt: Pull the top three articles by traffic from analytics, summarise them, and POST to /emails as a draft titled 'Weekly Digest'

### Audience Cleanup

Remove inactive or hard-bounced subscribers in bulk to keep deliverability strong. The DELETE method on `/subscribers/{id}` supports targeted cleanups, and PATCH lets an agent flag subscribers without removing them. A typical cleanup run completes in seconds for a small list.

Example prompt: List subscribers, identify those with no opens in 90 days, and PATCH them to a 'lapsed' tag for a re-engagement send

### AI Agent Newsletter Operations

Through Jentic, an AI agent can drive Buttondown newsletter operations using natural language intent. The agent searches for the right operation, loads the schema, and executes - no doc-scraping required. Useful for assistants that publish on a writer's behalf.

Example prompt: Search Jentic for 'add a buttondown subscriber', load the schema for POST /subscribers, and execute with email and metadata fields

## Key endpoints

| Method | Path | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| GET | `/subscribers` | List subscribers |
| POST | `/subscribers` | Create a subscriber |
| GET | `/subscribers/{id}` | Retrieve a subscriber |
| PATCH | `/subscribers/{id}` | Update a subscriber |
| DELETE | `/subscribers/{id}` | Delete a subscriber |
| GET | `/emails` | List emails |
| POST | `/emails` | Create an email draft |

## Key resources

- **Subscribers** — List, create, retrieve, update, and delete subscriber records
- **Emails** — List, create, retrieve, update, and delete newsletter emails

## Why Jentic

- **Setup:** Wiring this curated Buttondown slice by hand still means learning its token scheme, remembering the 'Token YOUR_API_KEY' prefix on the Authorization header, and writing your own backoff for the undocumented 429s. Through Jentic you install once, import the Buttondown API from the API Directory, store the token once, and your agent calls it.
- **Permission scoping:** Buttondown puts the subscriber or email id in the URL path (`/subscribers/{id}`, `/emails/{id}`), so you can pin your agent to specific records rather than the whole list. You choose the operations it may call, so destructive ones like deleting a subscriber or deleting an email draft are not included unless you add them.
- **Credential handling:** Your Buttondown token is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
- **Discovery method:** Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'add a buttondown subscriber' or 'create a buttondown email draft', and Jentic returns the matching operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.

## Related APIs

- **Buttondown API (full)** — Full 118-endpoint Buttondown surface
- **ConvertKit (Kit)** — Creator-focused email platform with automations
- **Beehiiv** — Newsletter platform with monetisation and referral features
- **MailerLite** — Broader email marketing platform

## FAQ

### Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for Buttondown API?

Buttondown does not publish an OpenAPI specification. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call Buttondown API via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started with Jentic One, the self-hosted execution layer.

### What authentication does the Buttondown API use?

Buttondown uses a token-based API key passed in the Authorization header in the format 'Token YOUR_API_KEY'. Through Jentic, the key is stored in the encrypted vault and never enters the agent's context.

### Can I update an existing subscriber with the Buttondown API?

Yes. PATCH `/subscribers/{id}` updates the subscriber identified by the path parameter. Use this to change tags, metadata, or status without removing and recreating the record.

### What are the rate limits for the Buttondown API?

Buttondown does not publish hard rate limits in the spec. For batch jobs, watch for 429 responses and back off rather than continuing tight retry loops.

### How do I create an email draft through Jentic?

Run pip install jentic, then search Jentic with the query 'create a buttondown email draft', load the schema for POST /emails, and execute with subject and body fields.

### How does this spec differ from the buttondown-api spec?

Both target the same base URL and authentication scheme. This spec covers 10 endpoints around the subscriber and email lifecycle; the buttondown-api spec covers 118 endpoints including automations, exports, attachments, and newsletter metadata.

### Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the Buttondown API?

Yes. Because you run Jentic One yourself, you decide which Buttondown operations your agent can call, so you can grant read-only access like GET /subscribers and GET /emails while excluding destructive ones such as DELETE `/subscribers/{id}` or DELETE `/emails/{id}` unless you add them. Since Buttondown puts the subscriber or email id in the URL path, you can also pin the agent to specific records rather than the whole audience. Your API token is held by your own instance and injected only at execution time, so it stays out of the agent's prompt and logs.