mikeknoop

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.

Hey HN! I'm Mike, co-founder at Zapier and head of Zapier Labs. Today our Labs team is launching a public version of Zappy (download it here: https://zapier.com/zappy): a fast, free screen capture tool that we built for our remote team.

At Zapier, we have 300+ teammates working from across the globe with no central office—we've been fully remote since day one. We've learned that increasing communication bandwidth is crucial when you're working remotely.

We wanted a tool for screenshots/GIFs to supplement apps like Slack, but nothing on the market had the mix of speed and features we were looking for. So, we built it ourselves. Zappy is a cornerstone of how we work at Zapier, nearly everyone at Zapier uses Zappy every week (voluntarily)! And we want to share it.

Why now? People around the world just experienced a sudden shift to remote work—and we know life sans-office comes with unique challenges. We want to share our experience and make that transition a little easier.

Our goal with Zappy was to provide a screen capture experience that was so fast, people would actually want to use it to communicate. To capture something, you hit a keyboard shortcut, draw a square, and press enter. Zappy copies the image to your clipboard so you can paste it anywhere (or provides a path to your GIF/video).

You can draw annotations, record a selfie view, and stitch shots together. Captures support image, GIF, and MP4 formats. One of my favorite features is being able to grab past captures from the Mac menu bar, instead of digging through folders.

We're working on more features, too, like self-hosted captures on S3, sharing permissions, and a Zapier integration. :-)

Zappy is free to download and use for anyone (you'll need a free Zapier account to log in once). And, as a special gift for paid Zapier customers, you'll get free capture hosting while it's in early access.

We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas. I hope you find Zappy useful!