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Show HN: Zapier's first API

by mikeknoop on 3/22/23, 4:32 PM with 32 comments

Hey HN! We launched Zapier way back in 2012 on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4138415 and thought we'd return home to announce something special and hopefully exciting :) We are trying to finally live up to the "API" in our name with Zapier's first universal API:

Natural Language Actions – https://zapier.com/l/natural-language-actions

API docs – https://nla.zapier.com/api/v1/docs

(to be fair, we have published APIs before that can access Zapier data, but never before one devs can use to directly call the 5k+ apps / 20k+ actions on our platform)

For example, you can use the API to:

  * Send messages in Slack
  * Retrieve a row in a Google Sheet
  * Draft a reply in Gmail
  * ... and thousands more actions with one universal API
We optimized NLA for use cases that receive user input in natural language (think chatbots, assistants, or any product/feature using LLMs) -- but not strictly required!

Folks have asked for an API for 10 years and I've always been slightly embarrassed we didn't have one. We hesitated because we did not want to pass along our universe of complexity to end devs. With the help of LLMs we found some cool patterns to deliver the API we always wanted.

My co-founder/CTO Bryan did an interview with Garry on YC blog with more details: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/building-apis-for-ai-an-int...

We also published a LangChain integration to show off some possibilities:

  * Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEK_9wLYEHU
  * Jupyter notebook: https://github.com/hwchase17/langchain/blob/master/docs/modules/utils/examples/zapier.ipynb
We know the API is not perfect but we're excited and eager for feedback to help shape it.

  • by bryanh on 3/22/23, 6:26 PM

    This was a ton of fun to build! We'll also be releasing a NLA enabled version of our Chrome extension [0] within the next couple of days which will be similar (but way more convenient than) the demo on the landing page above.

    Anyone can start hacking on NLA today, go check out https://nla.zapier.com/get-started/ after you log in!

    We're super bullish on LLMs for pulling "no-code" forward, helping more knowledge workers build automations. Already, folks are using our OpenAI [1] + ChatGPT [2] integrations to build very cool automations with summaries, categorization, copy writing, and more. We think there is a ton more to do here.

    If anyone is interested in this problem space, shoot me an email bryan@zapier.com!

    [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zapier/ngghlnfmdgn... [1] https://zapier.com/apps/openai/integrations [2] https://zapier.com/apps/chatgpt/integrations

  • by trhr on 3/23/23, 4:22 AM

    Hey Zapier! Stop introducing breaking changes into your integrations without deprecation warnings. Follow semver like normal people, or at the very least, publish a release strategy.

    Sincerely,

    A former consultant who hard sold like 50 of your customers to drop your platform after your last HubSpot integration debacle.

  • by mmaia on 3/22/23, 6:46 PM

    Zapier's landing page doesn't live up to what they're releasing. Be sure to check out the LangChain integration and examples.

    https://langchain.readthedocs.io/en/latest/modules/utils/exa...

  • by sontek on 3/22/23, 6:45 PM

    This is going to be an awesome way to optimize Zapier usage. I'm not a huge AI guy but love the idea of sprinkling a little on top of my existing zaps to make them even more useful!

    For example I have a zap right now that every time I react in slack with :todoist: it adds it to my TODO backlog. If I can use AI to read that thread and put a summary in there that'll make me more productive.

  • by toddmorey on 3/23/23, 4:43 AM

    Imagine just 3 years ago reading about a saas product advertising “hallucination protection”. Life comes at you fast.

  • by ahmed_ds on 3/22/23, 11:01 PM

    I would really love to hear a bit about Zapier's pursuit towards innovation.

    There are quite a few workflows automation platform out there. It is now an entire industry. With nocode being more and more popular, there is a lot of "Alternative to Zapier platforms".

    This makes me wonder, is innovation in no code workflow automation platform limited to just new API services? Or is there possibility to innovate in a new way? Some of Zapier's competitors have integrated programming language interface, spreadsheet element etc.

    As the OG workflow automation platform, what does innovation mean to Zapier beyond hosting an API service?

  • by killthebuddha on 3/22/23, 10:50 PM

    Related: I've been seeing a ton of news/references to LangChain recently. My own team is working closely with LLMs, and my non-technical cofounder is pushing hard for us to adopt LangChain as one of our core tools. So I spent a couple days diving into the LangChain codebase and I just don't understand why I would use LangChain. It feels to me like almost all of the LangChain codebase is dedicated to solving non-complex problems or interfacing with dozens on dozens of third-party APIs.

    All that said, the LangChain team looks solid, they've definitely been shipping code fast, tons of people have committed to the ecosystem, they raised a bunch of money, and I'm a huge believer in just going with standards.

    Has anyone here worked through this same dilemma, or a similar one, and could maybe help me with how I should be thinking about it?

  • by ezekg on 3/22/23, 7:38 PM

    Congrats on the launch. Looks useful for certain types of users. I can imagine it now:

    > Hey Zapier, generate a new Keygen license for ACME Co. and send the license key to them via email using Postmark. Send me a copy of the email as well. Lastly, mail them a new customer postcard.

    Going to share this with a few customers today.

  • by asdfzalsd on 3/23/23, 1:10 AM

    Pretty cool

    Was able to get something up and running pretty fast. (Search on google and texted myself)

    https://twitter.com/pwang_szn/status/1638707301073956864?s=2...

  • by xavdid on 3/22/23, 8:35 PM

    Congrats on the launch y'all, this is very neat! This was obviously a big effort.

    I'm excited to see how the introduction of AI will change the way integrations are built, maintained, and well, integrated.

    Cheers!

  • by BrianOnHN on 3/22/23, 7:00 PM

    I wonder if they fixed replying to Gmail threads. Last time I tried, without the NLP layer, it failed to do anything but create new threads.

  • by ShadowBanThis01 on 3/23/23, 9:04 AM

    Would’ve been nice to say what Zapier is.

  • by reality_inspctr on 3/22/23, 8:10 PM

    Super cool. Applied to keep building a calendar that lets you Spend Time from a time budget.

  • by extragood on 3/22/23, 8:25 PM

    Congratulations Zapier team!

    I've been an active Zapier user for the past 6 or so years, and my teams have adopted it for various simple integration projects.

    I'm excited to see what more we can do with Zapier's new Natural Language Actions.

  • by loopdoend on 3/22/23, 6:45 PM

    This would be really “fun” to scale with all the synchronous work going on. You guys definitely picked one of the hardest businesses to be in given the ungodly number of service providers you interface with!

    Very impressive.

  • by jacooper on 3/22/23, 5:01 PM

    Man, that would be great if we can add a step to summarize an article before posting it to social media

  • by rashidae on 3/22/23, 7:17 PM

    Awesome!!!