[HN Gopher] Show HN: Zapier's first API
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Show HN: Zapier's first API
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/m
odules/utils/examples/zapier.ipynb We know the API is not
perfect but we're excited and eager for feedback to help shape it.
Author : mikeknoop
Score : 132 points
Date : 2023-03-22 16:32 UTC (6 hours ago)
| killthebuddha wrote:
| 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?
| ezekg wrote:
| 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.
| extragood wrote:
| 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.
| rashidae wrote:
| Awesome!!!
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| 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.
| mikeknoop wrote:
| We just added a "Gmail: Create Draft Reply" action and by
| default the NLA API will auto-guess the appropriate thread.
| Share feedback if you see this not working as expected as it's
| new!
| bryanh wrote:
| 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
| lagniappe wrote:
| Thanks for making this for us! Congrats on your big day
| xavdid wrote:
| 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!
| loopdoend wrote:
| 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.
| reality_inspctr wrote:
| Super cool. Applied to keep building a calendar that lets you
| Spend Time from a time budget.
| sontek wrote:
| 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.
| mmaia wrote:
| 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...
| mikeknoop wrote:
| Agree, will make the landing page better. Would recommend
| checking out this LangChain notebook:
| https://github.com/hwchase17/langchain/blob/master/docs/modu...
| jacooper wrote:
| Man, that would be great if we can add a step to summarize an
| article before posting it to social media
| jd_smeltser wrote:
| You could accomplish this with the existing chatGPT integration
| bryanh wrote:
| We have you covered!
| https://zapier.com/apps/openai/integrations
| dylburger wrote:
| Take a look at
| https://pipedream.com/apps/openai/actions/summarize
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(page generated 2023-03-22 23:01 UTC)