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Show HN: Things to Do API

25 points by invalidmonk ago | 14 comments

I built an api/mcp for local events: pop-ups, one-off events, concerts, etc. currently covering the SF bay area.

I've been building a bunch of consumer apps lately around personalization and recommendation and have had a hard time finding this data in one spot. agents can find useful stuff through tool calls / web search, but slow.

you can scrape on demand too, but i wanted a faster data set and couldn't find an existing provider for the mix of event types I was searching for.

the methodology for it is to find influential accounts/posters/etc. and do a fan out across things that they co-post with.

mcp: `claude mcp add --transport http thingstodo https://api.thingstodoapi.com/mcp`

I'm considering adding other cities. If you're building something that needs local event data, would something like this be useful and where would you want coverage?

tokioyoyo |next [-]

Which sources does it support? Discoverability is a huge problem for smaller events, as most get posted on IG, and it’s hard to even find them through IG.

I started relying on a mix of Muse/ChatGPT/Gemini depended on which data sources I want to combine, as they all seem to have special deals with different sources.

shrinks99 |next |previous [-]

This is pretty cool, does it scrape Instagram? A lot of events where I live (Toronto) are posted there and not many other places. It's a real problem if you don't want to spend time on that app.

invalidmonk |root |parent [-]

amongst a few other data sources :) is this something you'd use if we added toronto support?

shrinks99 |root |parent [-]

Personally, I don't have a project that requires it right now, but aspirationally maybe! I agree with another commenter that mentioned this is basically a public service that should exist similar to Wikidata / Musicbrainz.

I know this is currently a paid service you're trying to make happen and the scraping part is a reasonable amount of effort, but if you wanted to make the data source public, you could publish community.lexicon.calendar.event ATProto records and it would be very cool. At the very least, you could ingest it as a data source!

aleksiy123 |next |previous [-]

Cool idea and I really like the design of the landing page.

invalidmonk |root |parent [-]

thanks!

egonschiele |next |previous [-]

This feels hard to maintain and keep up-to-date, but I would definitely use it! Great idea.

invalidmonk |root |parent [-]

If an agent maintains it, is it hard? :D

fellowniusmonk |next |previous [-]

Solving this issue a core problem for humanity, and it goes hand in hand with the need for a public service.

I'm actually working to do this at ultra low cost as a public service like Wikipedia or musicbrainz.

I'll be publishing global costs to serve and letting people donate to support.

invalidmonk |root |parent [-]

please share!

kylecazar |root |parent [-]

Two unrelated monks working on the same thing? What are the odds

invalidmonk |root |parent [-]

events apis and green chartreuse

lap248 |next |previous [-]

super slick! got results quickly and am getting more interesting and in the know kind of events than other tools

invalidmonk |root |parent [-]

tysm! are there any geos you would like to see?

Klovy |previous [-]

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