Discourse API Documentation

Name: Discourse API Documentation API
Brand: Discourse API Documentation
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecCommunicationsChat MessagingapiKey93 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Create topics, post replies, manage users and groups, and run admin operations on a Discourse forum. Useful for community-management, support, and event-coordination agents.

Quickstart

Get started with Discourse API Documentation in minutes using your preferred integration method.

# Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf)
{
  "jentic": {
    "url": "https://api.jentic.com/mcp",
    "auth": "oauth"
  }
}

# Then ask your agent:
"create a topic on Discourse"

# → Jentic returns the GET /events tool with parameter schema, agent executes.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with Discourse API Documentation API.

Create and reply to forum topics with Markdown via /posts.json and /t/{id}.json

Search topics, posts, and users via /search/query.json with category, tag, and user filters

Manage groups, group memberships, and category access through /groups and /admin/groups

Schedule and list community events via the /discourse-post-event/events.json endpoints

GET STARTED

Start building with Discourse API Documentation API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Use for: Create a new topic in a Discourse category, Post a reply to an existing Discourse topic, Search a Discourse forum for topics matching a keyword, List upcoming Discourse community events

Not supported: Does not handle real-time WebSocket events or transactional email delivery — use for hosted Discourse forum REST operations only.

Discourse is the open-source forum software behind tens of thousands of communities, support sites, and product hubs. The hosted discourse.org API exposes 93 operations covering topics, posts, categories, users, groups, badges, tags, search, private messages, the discourse-post-event plugin, and admin features such as backups and site settings. It is the same surface used internally by the Discourse mobile app and core integrations.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use Discourse API Documentation API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Customer Community and Support Forum Automation

Product teams running a Discourse community can automate the lifecycle of support topics — creating posts from inbound support tickets, tagging them, and notifying owners through group mentions. The /posts.json and /t/{id}.json endpoints handle topic creation and replies, while /search/query.json finds duplicate threads. This keeps the public knowledge base growing without manual triage.

POST /posts.json to create a new support topic with title, raw Markdown body, and category ID, then attach product-area tags via /t/{id}.json.

Community Events with Discourse Post Event Plugin

Communities using the discourse-post-event plugin can list, create, and export community events directly via the /discourse-post-event/events.json and /discourse-post-event/events.ics endpoints. Calendars can be embedded into external sites or pulled into personal calendars, giving members a single source of truth for meetups, AMAs, and office hours.

GET /discourse-post-event/events.json filtered to upcoming events for the 'meetups' category and render the response as a calendar widget.

Group Sync from External Identity Systems

Hosted Discourse customers can keep group membership in sync with HR systems, CRMs, or partner directories. PUT /groups/{id}/members and DELETE /groups/{id}/members add and remove users while /groups/{id}.json fetches state. This is commonly used to grant access to private categories based on subscription tier or role in another system.

Add user 'jane.doe' to the 'paid-customers' group via PUT /groups/{id}/members and confirm membership with GET /groups/{id}/members.

Forum Backups and Admin Automation

Hosted and self-hosted Discourse operators can automate routine admin work — triggering nightly backups via /admin/backups.json, downloading the latest backup file, and rotating retention. Category, badge, and group management can also be scripted from CI for reproducible community governance, especially when promoting changes from staging to production.

POST /admin/backups.json to trigger a fresh backup and poll until the file is available, then download via the returned filename.

AI Agent Community Assistant

AI agents can act as Discourse community helpers — answering recurring questions, posting daily summaries, and tagging stale topics — by calling the Discourse API through Jentic. The Api-Key and Api-Username headers stay in MAXsystem and never appear in the agent's context, while Jentic search lets the agent find the right topic or post operation by intent.

Search Jentic for 'reply to a Discourse topic', load the POST /posts.json operation, and execute it to post a daily community digest summary into the announcements category.

Key Endpoints

93 endpoints — discourse is the open-source forum software behind tens of thousands of communities, support sites, and product hubs.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

POST

/posts.json

Create a new topic or reply to an existing topic

GET

/categories.json

List forum categories

GET

/discourse-post-event/events.json

List community events

GET

/discourse-post-event/events.ics

Export community events as iCal

PUT

/groups/{id}/members

Add members to a group

POST

/admin/backups.json

Trigger a forum backup

POST

/admin/badges.json

Create a new badge

POST

/posts.json

Create a new topic or reply to an existing topic

GET

/categories.json

List forum categories

GET

/discourse-post-event/events.json

List community events

GET

/discourse-post-event/events.ics

Export community events as iCal

PUT

/groups/{id}/members

Add members to a group

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

Discourse Api-Key and Api-Username are stored encrypted in Jentic's MAXsystem vault and added to outgoing requests at execution time. The raw API key never enters the agent's context, which matters because Discourse admin keys grant near-root forum access.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search by intent (e.g., 'create a forum topic' or 'list community events') and Jentic returns the matching Discourse operation across the 93-endpoint surface, so the agent can act without browsing the Discourse documentation.

Time to first call

Direct Discourse integration: 1-2 days for key issuance, header handling, and category/tag mapping. Through Jentic: under 30 minutes — search, load schema, execute.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Alternative

Discourse (self-hosted)

Self-hosted Discourse on a custom or local domain

Choose discourse.local when running on a self-hosted instance with a custom domain; choose discourse.org for the hosted SaaS plans.

Alternative

Mattermost

Self-hosted real-time team messaging

Choose Mattermost for synchronous team chat; choose Discourse for asynchronous threaded forum discussions.

Complementary

Zendesk

Customer support ticketing platform

Pair Zendesk private tickets with Discourse public forums to mirror community-resolved questions back to the public knowledge base.

FAQs

Specific to using Discourse API Documentation API through Jentic.

What authentication does the Discourse API use?

Discourse uses two headers: Api-Key (an admin or user-scoped key) and Api-Username (the username the request acts on behalf of). Through Jentic, both values are held in the MAXsystem vault and injected at execution; agents never see the raw key.

Can I list community events with the Discourse API?

Yes, when the discourse-post-event plugin is enabled. /discourse-post-event/events.json returns events as JSON and /discourse-post-event/events.ics returns the same set as an iCalendar feed for embedding in personal or external calendars.

What are the rate limits for the Discourse API?

Discourse enforces per-action rate limits configured by site settings such as max_requests_per_minute, max_post_creates_per_minute, and per-IP limits. Hosted plans publish defaults per tier. Inspect site settings or contact your Discourse hosting provider for the exact values applied to your forum.

How do I create a topic on Discourse through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'create a topic on Discourse', load the POST /posts.json operation, and execute it with title, raw Markdown content, category ID, and any tags. Jentic returns the new topic's ID and slug for follow-up operations.

Can I export forum data with the Discourse API?

Yes, /admin/backups.json triggers a full forum backup, and /admin/backups/{filename} downloads a specific backup. Combined with category, topic, and user listing endpoints, you can also build incremental exports without invoking the full backup process.