Discourse API Documentation
56
AI ReadinessFoundational (C)56/100
Official vendor OpenAPI document · agent-readyCommunicationsChat 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.
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.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the Discourse API Documentation to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Discourse API Documentation, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
1
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fdiscourse.local%2Fdiscourse-local" | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fdiscourse.local%2Fdiscourse-local" | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
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
List notifications, read mailing-list summaries, and manage user preferences for community engagement
Trigger and download forum backups via /admin/backups.json
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 your Jentic One instance 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
POST
/admin/backups.json
Trigger a forum backup
POST
/admin/badges.json
Create a new badge
Jentic AI Readiness Score
This API is usable in Jentic One now. Its AI-readiness score against Jentic's framework shows where it stands today and where improvements would make it even easier for agents to use.
D
Discourse API Documentation
- Foundational (C)56/100
47
Foundational Compliance56
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility40
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience87
Agent Usability100
Security60
AI DiscoverabilityPowered by JenticScoring Framework 1.0.0 | Scoring Engine 0.4.0
Show dimension breakdown
47
Foundational Compliance
Base layer of spec validity and structural soundness.
Grade: DSignals: 4
80%
Lint Results
Aggregated quality score from linter diagnostics, weighted by severity.
100%
Resolution Completeness
Percentage of `$ref` references that resolve successfully.
0%
Specification Validity
Checks whether the API description parses successfully and conforms to its declared specification (e.g., OpenAPI).
7%
Structural Integrity
Structural correctness score based on schema issues using logarithmic dampening.
56
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility
Clarity, completeness, and ingestion readiness for developers and tooling.
Grade: CSignals: 4
2%
Example Density
How richly the API is illustrated with examples.
99%
Example Validity
Percentage of examples that conform to their schemas.
25%
Response Coverage
Percentage of operations with complete response definitions (success, client error, server error).
100%
Tooling Readiness
Health of API ingestion, bundling, and resolution within Jentic pipelines.
40
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience
Semantic breadth, depth, and agent comprehension for AI systems.
Grade: FSignals: 4
5%
Description Coverage
Coverage of descriptions across API elements.
0%
Error Standardization
Coverage of RFC 9457 Problem Details for error responses.
99%
OperationId Quality
Coverage, uniqueness, and casing consistency of operationIds for AI inference.
55%
Summary Coverage
Coverage of summaries across operations/tags/info.
87
Agent Usability
Functional utility, complexity comfort, and AI orchestration readiness.
Grade: ASignals: 1
87%
Complexity Comfort
Agent comfort level based on API operational and structural complexity.
100
Security
Trust, risk posture, and security compliance.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
100%
Authentication Strength
Average quality of security schemes based on authentication method strength (weakest link for OAuth2).
60
AI Discoverability
Findability, semantic richness, and reasoning readiness.
Grade: C+Signals: 1
60%
Descriptive Richness
Clarity and depth of descriptions across API elements.
Score it yourself
Every API in the directory is allowlisted, so you can re-score it with no key required.
npx @jentic/api-scorecard-cli score <openapi-url>Why Jentic?
What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.
Setup
Wiring a self-hosted Discourse forum by hand means carrying its API key and username in paired request headers and pointing at your own forum host yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import the Discourse API from the API Directory, store the key once, and your agent calls it.
Permission scoping
Discourse admin keys grant broad forum access, so scope your agent to the operations it needs, such as creating a post or listing categories. You choose the operations it may call, so admin operations like creating backups or badges are not included unless you add them.
Credential isolation
Your Discourse API key and username are stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected as the paired request headers at execution time. They never enter the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'create a forum topic' or 'add a member to a group', and Jentic returns the matching Discourse operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
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 your Jentic One instance 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.
Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the Discourse API?
Yes. Because your Jentic One instance is self-hosted, your own rules decide which Discourse operations and credentials the agent may use. A Discourse admin key grants broad forum access, so you can scope the agent to only the operations it needs, such as creating a post via POST /posts.json or listing categories via GET /categories.json. Broad admin operations like triggering backups through /admin/backups.json or creating badges are not available to the agent unless you explicitly add them.
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