For Agents
Look up movies and TV shows by IMDb ID or title — actors, awards, calendars, ratings, images, and trailers across 58 endpoints. Access token is passed in the URL path.
Install Jentic One Beta
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Shinobi API, 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.
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | shStep 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | 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.
What an agent can do with Shinobi API.
Search actors and actresses by query and return up to five matching records
Look up known aliases of a movie or TV show by IMDb ID or title
Retrieve award winners and nominees for a given year or actor
GET STARTED
Use for: I need to find all shows an actor has appeared in, I want to look up the TV calendar for tonight in the UK, Search for award winners by year, Find aliases for a movie by its IMDb ID
Not supported: Does not handle streaming playback, ticketing, or user watch history — use for movie and TV metadata, schedules, and awards lookups only.
Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for Shinobi API, keeping it validated and agent-ready. Shinobi is a community-maintained movie and television metadata API exposing 58 endpoints covering actors, awards, calendars, cast and crew, images, magnet hashes, ratings, trailers, and shows. Endpoints are addressed with an access token in the URL path, and lookups are available by IMDb ID, title, year, and country. The dataset blends scheduling, biographical, and visual metadata, which makes it suitable for second-screen apps, recommendation engines, and entertainment chatbots that need a single source of structured film and TV facts. The API is intentionally read-heavy with a few POST endpoints to add new actors or shows.
Pull TV schedules by date, country, network, or specific show and season
Resolve cast and crew lists for a queried actor across their filmography
Fetch movie and television show ratings from the metadata catalogue
Add new actors or TV shows to the database via the AddActor and AddTVShow endpoints
Patterns agents use Shinobi API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Second-Screen TV Companion App
A second-screen app shows the cast, ratings, and trailers for whatever the user is watching. Shinobi exposes /Cast, /Ratings, and /Trailers endpoints keyed by IMDb ID, so an agent can look up a show in real time and stitch the metadata into the app's UI without scraping.
Given IMDb ID tt0903747, fetch the cast list, current rating, and available trailers and return them as a single JSON payload.
Awards Season Research
Entertainment bloggers and analysts pull historical award data to build retrospectives. Shinobi's /Awards/ByYear and /Awards/ByWinner endpoints return structured records that can be aggregated quickly into rankings and timelines.
Pull all award winners for 2024 and group the results by category to produce a ranked summary.
TV Calendar Notification Bot
A chat bot notifies users when their favourite shows air. Shinobi's /Calendar endpoints return schedules by date, country, and show, so an agent can run a daily check and message users about new episodes without depending on a paid scheduling service.
Each morning, fetch /Calendar/ByDate for today and the user's country, filter for shows on the user's watchlist, and send a Slack message with tonight's airings.
AI Agent Movie Recommendation Helper
A chat agent answers 'what should I watch tonight' questions by combining Shinobi's ratings, calendar, and cast data with the user's preferences. Through Jentic, the agent searches for the right Shinobi operation, loads the input schema, and executes against the public API.
When the user asks 'what's on tonight with high ratings', search Jentic for 'get tonight's TV calendar' and combine the result with /Ratings lookups to return the top three options.
58 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for shinobi api, keeping it validated and agent-ready.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
/Actors/Search/{accesstoken}/{Query}
Search actors and actresses
/Aliases/ByID/{AccessToken}/{imdbID}
Get aliases for a title by IMDb ID
/Awards/ByWinner/{AccessToken}/{Nominee}
List awards by nominee or winner
/Calendar/ByDate/{AccessToken}/{Date}/{Country}
TV schedule for a date and country
/Cast/ActorBySearch/{AccessToken}/{Actor}
List shows for an actor
/AddActor
Add a new actor record
/AddTVShow
Add a new TV show record
/Actors/Search/{accesstoken}/{Query}
Search actors and actresses
/Aliases/ByID/{AccessToken}/{imdbID}
Get aliases for a title by IMDb ID
/Awards/ByWinner/{AccessToken}/{Nominee}
List awards by nominee or winner
/Calendar/ByDate/{AccessToken}/{Date}/{Country}
TV schedule for a date and country
/Cast/ActorBySearch/{AccessToken}/{Actor}
List shows for an actor
Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.
Credential isolation
The Shinobi access token is stored encrypted in the Jentic vault (MAXsystem). The token is substituted into the URL path at execution time, so the agent never sees the raw value even though Shinobi places it in the URL.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search by intent (e.g., 'list shows for an actor') and Jentic returns the matching Shinobi operation with its path-parameter schema, so the agent can pick between IMDb-ID and title-based variants without reading docs.
Time to first call
Direct Shinobi integration: 1-2 days to handle the path-token convention and the 58-endpoint surface. Through Jentic: under 1 hour — search, load schema, execute.
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
Specific to using Shinobi API through Jentic.
Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for Shinobi API?
Hillbilly Software does not publish an OpenAPI specification. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call Shinobi API via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started at https://app.jentic.com/sign-up.
What authentication does the Shinobi API use?
The Shinobi API embeds an access token directly in the URL path of each call (for example /Actors/Search/{accesstoken}/{Query}). Through Jentic, the access token is held in the MAXsystem vault and substituted into the path at execution time, so the raw token never enters the agent context.
Can I look up shows by IMDb ID?
Yes. Several endpoints accept an IMDb ID, including /Aliases/ByID/{AccessToken}/{imdbID}. Use IMDb ID for exact lookups and the title-based variants like /Aliases/ByName when you only have a string.
What are the rate limits for the Shinobi API?
The Shinobi OpenAPI specification does not declare rate limits. Hillbilly Software enforces per-token quotas, so use search-result limits like the five-record cap on /Actors/Search and add backoff when paginating through award years.
How do I get tonight's TV schedule through Jentic?
Run pip install jentic, then await client.search('get tonight TV calendar'), load the GET /Calendar/ByDate/{AccessToken}/{Date}/{Country} schema, and execute with today's date and the country code. Filter the response by the user's watchlist.
Can I add new shows or actors to the database?
Yes. POST /AddActor and POST /AddTVShow let authenticated callers contribute new records. These are write operations so route them through Jentic with the contributor token rather than a read-only token.
/AddActor
Add a new actor record
/AddTVShow
Add a new TV show record