Stack Exchange integrations and automation

The Stack Exchange API (version 2.3) covers every site in the network, from Stack Overflow to Super User and the smaller communities, and the site parameter picks which one a request reads. Most of what people automate is reading: new questions with a given tag, unanswered questions, answers on a question, a user’s reputation history, or search results. Writing, such as posting an answer or a comment, requires an OAuth access token with the write_access scope and is subject to the same rules as a human user.

Quota is the first thing to plan around. Requests without an app key share a small daily allowance per IP address; registering an app on Stack Apps and sending its key raises the allowance to a much larger daily quota, and every response reports quota_remaining. Responses can also include a backoff field, which tells the client how many seconds to wait before calling that method again. A workflow that ignores backoff can be throttled.

There are no webhooks. Watching a tag therefore means a scheduled run that asks for questions created or active since the previous run, using fromdate and sort=creation or sort=activity. Store the highest creation_date seen so the next run picks up where the last one stopped, and remember the run happens even when nobody has asked anything. Filters let you choose which fields come back; the default filter omits question bodies, so ask for a filter that includes body or body_markdown if you need the text.

Good fits are product teams who want to know when their library is mentioned, support teams tracking an internal Stack Overflow-style tag, or maintainers who want a weekly list of unanswered questions to triage. Content on the network is licensed under Creative Commons with attribution, so a digest that republishes question text should link back and credit the author.