Discourse API Documentation

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

✓ Official Vendor SpecCommunicationsChat MessagingapiKey89 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Create topics, post replies, manage users, groups, and tags on a self-hosted Discourse forum. Useful for community automation, support-bot, and admin 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 update topics, posts, and private messages via /posts.json and /t/{id}.json

Manage user accounts, groups, and group memberships through /users and /groups endpoints

Run search queries across topics, posts, and users via /search/query.json

Administer categories, badges, tags, and site backups through admin-prefixed 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, Reply to a Discourse topic with a Markdown post, Search Discourse for topics matching a keyword, List all members of a Discourse group

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

Discourse is an open-source forum platform used by communities, support sites, and product companies. This local-host variant of the Discourse API exposes 89 operations covering categories, topics, posts, users, groups, badges, tags, search, private messages, and admin features such as backups and site settings. It is the same surface used by self-hosted Discourse instances running under custom or local domains.

Use Cases

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

★ Community Support Forums for Product Companies

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

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.

Admin Operations and Site Backups

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 across staging and production environments.

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

Group Management and Onboarding

Community managers and SSO integrations can keep group membership in sync with HR, customer, or partner directories. PUT /groups/{id}/members and DELETE /groups/{id}/members add and remove users, while /groups/{id}.json fetches the current state. This is commonly used to grant access to private categories based on a user's role in another system.

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

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

89 endpoints — discourse is an open-source forum platform used by communities, support sites, and product companies.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

POST

/posts.json

Create a new topic or reply to an existing topic

GET

/categories.json

List forum categories

GET

/c/{slug}/{id}.json

Get a category's topics by slug and ID

POST

/admin/groups.json

Create a new group

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

/c/{slug}/{id}.json

Get a category's topics by slug and ID

POST

/admin/groups.json

Create a new group

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 'add member to a group') and Jentic returns the matching Discourse operation across the 89-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 (Hosted)

Hosted Discourse forum operating on the same API surface

Choose discourse.org when running on Discourse's hosted plans; choose discourse.local for self-hosted instances on custom domains.

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 Local 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 create a topic with the Discourse API?

Yes, POST /posts.json with title, raw Markdown body, and a category ID creates a new topic. Omitting title and providing topic_id instead posts a reply to the existing topic. Tags can be supplied at creation or applied via /t/{id}.json afterwards.

What are the rate limits for the Discourse API?

Self-hosted Discourse instances configure their own rate limits via site settings (max_requests_per_minute and per-action limits). Hosted Discourse plans publish per-tier defaults. Check site settings on your forum or contact your Discourse hosting provider for exact values.

How do I run a forum search through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'search Discourse forum', load the schema for /search/query.json, and execute it with your query string and any filters such as category or tag. Jentic returns matching topics, posts, and users in a single response.

Can I trigger a backup of a Discourse forum?

Yes, POST /admin/backups.json starts a backup job on the server. Poll the backups list endpoint to confirm the file is ready, then download it via /admin/backups/{filename}. This requires an admin Api-Key with backup permissions.