canonical: https://jentic.com/apis/nytimes.com/archive

# Nytimes NYT Archive API

The New York Times Archive API returns the complete list of NYT articles published in a given month, going back to September 1851. Each response is a month's worth of article metadata - headlines, abstracts, bylines, sections, keywords, and links - making it the canonical bulk-retrieval endpoint for NYT content. The API exposes a single GET path keyed by year and month, which is intentionally the simplest possible surface for building local mirrors of NYT metadata, training corpora, longitudinal analysis sets, and timelines.

## For AI agents

Retrieve a complete month of New York Times article metadata going back to 1851 from a single year/month endpoint, authenticated with an API key in the query string.

## Scope

Does not handle full-text query, real-time alerts, or article body retrieval - use for monthly metadata bulk download only.

## Capabilities

- Retrieve every NYT article published in a given month with full metadata
- Build a local mirror of NYT article metadata back to September 1851
- Construct a longitudinal corpus by walking month-by-month from a chosen start year
- Extract section, byline, and keyword data from each article record
- Power timeline visualisations and 'on this day' features from historical NYT data

## Use cases

### Historical News Corpus Build

Mirror NYT article metadata month by month into a local store to support research on language change, topic prevalence, or named entities over time. The single /year/month.json endpoint returns the full month in one response, which keeps the build script simple and easy to resume. Setup takes a few hours, with the bulk of the work being respectful pacing of requests.

Example prompt: Walk years 1900 through 2020 and call GET /{year}/{month}.json for each, writing the response JSON to local storage for later analysis.

### On This Day Feature

Build an 'on this day' module for a website or newsletter that surfaces NYT headlines from the same date in past years. The Archive API returns the full month, so a worker can preselect dates and cache the relevant entries. This provides richer historical context than scraped sources because the metadata is canonical and includes section and byline information.

Example prompt: GET /{year}/{month}.json for the current month minus 50 years, filter to today's date, and return the top three headlines.

### Agent-Driven Historical Research

Let an AI agent answer 'what was The New York Times reporting in October 1962?' by calling the Archive API for that month and summarising the headlines. Through Jentic, the agent searches by intent and gets only the operations it needs, with the API key held in the platform's vault rather than in the agent's context.

Example prompt: Search Jentic for 'list NYT articles for a given month', load the operation, and summarise the top headlines from October 1962.

## Key endpoints

| Method | Path | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| GET | /{year}/{month}.json | Retrieve all NYT articles published in the given month |

## Key resources

- **Monthly Archive** — All NYT articles published in a specific year and month, returned as a single JSON document.

## Why Jentic

- **Setup:** Wiring the NYT Archive API by hand means appending your api-key to the query string against api.nytimes.com/svc/archive/v1 and handling the bulk-download request plumbing yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import the NYT Archive API from the API Directory, store the key once, and your agent calls it.
- **Permission scoping:** The Archive API is a single read-only monthly download with no resource id, so scope the agent to that one operation and leave everything else out. You choose the operations it may call, so it only reaches the endpoint you list.
- **Credential handling:** Your NYT api-key is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected as the api-key query parameter at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
- **Discovery method:** Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'list NYT articles for a given month', and Jentic returns the matching Archive operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.

## Related APIs

- **NYT Article Search API** — Query-based search across the same NYT corpus with filters and facets, complementing month-bulk archive retrieval.
- **NYT Most Popular API** — Returns most-emailed, most-shared, and most-viewed NYT articles for the current period.
- **Guardian Content API** — Search and retrieve articles from The Guardian's archive - alternative source for cross-publication news research.
- **NewsAPI** — Aggregator across many publications with shorter retention than the NYT archive.

## FAQ

### What authentication does the NYT Archive API use?

The API uses an API key passed as a query parameter named 'api-key'. There is no header-based auth and no OAuth flow. Through Jentic, the api-key is stored encrypted in the vault and appended to every request URL at execution time so the agent never holds it directly.

### How far back does the archive go?

Coverage starts in September 1851. You can request any year and month from then forward, and the response contains every article The New York Times published that month with its metadata.

### What are the rate limits for the NYT Archive API?

The spec does not embed explicit limits. The Times's published policy is 5 requests per minute and 500 per day for the developer tier; back off on HTTP 429 and pace bulk-archive walks accordingly.

### How do I retrieve a month of articles through Jentic?

Run pip install jentic, then search for 'list NYT articles for a given month'. Jentic returns GET /{year}/{month}.json with its input schema; supply the year and month and execute. Run it through Jentic One, the self-hosted execution layer, to get an agent API key.

### Does the Archive API return article body text?

No - the response includes metadata (headlines, abstracts, bylines, keywords, section, URL) rather than full body text. Use the URL field to link out to the article on nytimes.com for the full text.

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

Yes. Because Jentic One is self-hosted, you set the rules that decide which operations and credentials your agent may use. The NYT Archive API exposes a single read-only monthly download at GET /{year}/{month}.json with no resource id, so you can grant your agent just that one operation and leave every other capability out. You also hold the api-key in your own instance and it is injected at execution time, so the agent only reaches the exact endpoint you list.