canonical: https://jentic.com/apis/nytimes.com/community-api

# Nytimes Community API

The New York Times Community API provides read access to comments left by registered users on NYT articles. Agents can pull recent comments site-wide, filter by article URL, retrieve a specific user's comment history, or fetch comments posted within a date range. Each comment record includes the author's display name, comment body, recommendation count, NYT pick flag, and the article URL it was posted on. The API is officially marked deprecated by NYT, but the endpoints continue to respond and remain useful for archival research and sentiment analysis on legacy NYT comment threads.

## For AI agents

Read NYT user comments by article URL, by user, by date, or as a recent feed across the site.

## Scope

Does not post, edit, or moderate comments and does not handle replies or recommendations - use for read-only retrieval of NYT comment threads only.

## Capabilities

- Pull the most recent comments posted across all NYT articles
- Retrieve every comment thread attached to a specific article URL
- Fetch a single user's full comment history by display name
- Filter comments to a specific publication date range
- Surface NYT-picked comments via the editors_selection flag in responses
- Page through long comment threads using the offset parameter

## Use cases

### Comment Thread Archival

Pull and store the full comment thread for a NYT article for archival or research purposes. The /user-content/url.json endpoint accepts the article URL and returns every comment with body text, author display name, recommendation count, and the editors_selection flag identifying NYT picks. Pagination via the offset parameter handles threads with hundreds of entries.

Example prompt: Call /user-content/url.json?url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/01/opinion/example.html with offset 0, then page through with offset increments of 25 until results are empty.

### Sentiment Analysis on Recent Coverage

Feed recent NYT comments into a downstream sentiment classifier. The /user-content/recent.json endpoint returns the latest comments site-wide so an agent can sample the current discussion volume and tone. Combined with article URL filtering, this supports near-real-time analysis of reader response to fresh coverage.

Example prompt: Fetch /user-content/recent.json with offset 0, extract the commentBody field for each entry, and pipe to a sentiment classifier returning per-article averages.

### User Comment History Research

Retrieve the full comment history of a specific NYT user by display name to study contribution patterns, frequency, and topic clustering. The /user-content/user.json endpoint accepts a userDisplayName parameter and pages through the user's published comments.

Example prompt: Call /user-content/user.json?userDisplayName='Jane Smith'&offset=0 and continue paging in 25-comment increments until the response array is empty.

### Agent-Driven Comment Lookup via Jentic

An AI research assistant uses Jentic to call the deprecated NYT Community API at runtime when a user asks for comment context on a story. The agent searches Jentic by intent, loads the operation schema, and executes the call without manually wiring auth or pagination.

Example prompt: Search Jentic for 'get NYT article comments', load the /user-content/url.json operation, and execute with the target article URL.

## Key endpoints

| Method | Path | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| GET | /user-content/recent.json | List recent comments across all NYT articles |
| GET | /user-content/url.json | Get comments for a specific article URL |
| GET | /user-content/user.json | Get all comments by a specific NYT user |
| GET | /user-content/by-date.json | Get comments posted on a specific date |

## Key resources

- **Recent Comments** — Site-wide feed of the most recently published reader comments.
- **Comments by URL** — Comment threads scoped to a specific article URL.
- **Comments by User** — All comments published by a single user, looked up by display name.
- **Comments by Date** — Comments published on a specific calendar date or range.

## Why Jentic

- **Setup:** Wiring the NYT Community API by hand means appending your api-key to the query string against api.nytimes.com/svc/community/v3 and handling the comment-retrieval request plumbing yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import the NYT Community API from the API Directory, store the key once, and your agent calls it.
- **Permission scoping:** The Community API is read-only comment retrieval with no resource id, so scope the agent to the operations it needs, such as recent comments or comments by URL, and leave the rest out. You choose the operations it may call, so it only reaches the endpoints 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 'get NYT article comments' or 'look up reader comment history', and Jentic returns the matching Community operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.

## Related APIs

- **NYT Top Stories API** — Surfaces the article URLs whose comment threads can then be loaded via the Community API.
- **NYT Times Newswire API** — Streams freshly published article URLs that can be paired with Community comments.
- **NYT Most Popular API** — Returns the most-emailed and most-shared NYT articles whose comment threads are typically active.

## FAQ

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

The Community API uses an API key passed as the api-key query parameter. Provision a key at developer.nytimes.com. Through Jentic, the key is held in the vault and injected at request time, so it never appears in the agent's context.

### Is the NYT Community API still active?

NYT marks this API as deprecated in their developer portal, meaning no new features will land and SLA is not guaranteed. The 4 endpoints continue to respond as of this writing, so the API remains usable for archival lookups and historical research, but production systems should plan for eventual sunset.

### Can I retrieve every comment on a specific article?

Yes. Call GET /user-content/url.json with the article URL and page using the offset parameter in increments of 25 until the results array is empty. Each response includes commentBody, userDisplayName, recommendations, and the editorsSelection flag.

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

NYT enforces 500 requests per day and 5 requests per minute per API key across all NYT developer APIs combined. Build in retry-after handling when reading large comment threads.

### How do I pull recent NYT comments through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'get recent NYT comments', load the /user-content/recent.json operation, and execute it. The response returns the latest site-wide comments with article URL, body, and recommendation count.

### Can I post or moderate comments through this API?

No. The Community API is read-only. There are no endpoints for creating, editing, deleting, or recommending comments, so it cannot be used for moderation or community management workflows.

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

Yes. Because you run Jentic One yourself, your own rules decide which of the Community API's read operations the agent may call, so you can allow only recent comments or comments by article URL and leave comments-by-user or comments-by-date out. The API is read-only with no resource id, and it exposes no way to post, edit, or moderate, so a scoped agent can only retrieve the comment threads you permit. Your NYT api-key is stored once by your own instance and injected at request time, so it never reaches the agent's prompt or context.