Research and reading · Open Library

books.search

Searches Open Library. details returns the work description, subjects, a few editions with ISBNs and links to Open Library and the Internet Archive.

Operation: POST /v1/capabilities/books.search/execute
operationId: executeBooksSearch
Typical credits: 0
Search deadline: 15 s server-side
Paging: page
Availability: ConfiguredChecked 2026-09-23 21:02 UTC

Cost basis: Free. Availability is reported per deployment by GET /v1/catalog (available). The timestamped snapshot describes configuration, not provider uptime or your account's enabled choices. Check the catalog with your own key before a call. Credits are explained under credits and limits.

Request

Body of POST /v1/capabilities/books.search/execute, JSON, validated against the BooksSearchRequest component of the public OpenAPI document. Defaults are applied server-side, so an omitted optional field behaves exactly as its default.

Request fields of books.search
Field	Type	Required	Default	Constraints and description
query	string	no		min length 1, max length 300
author	string	no		min length 1, max length 200
subject	string	no		min length 1, max length 200
num	integer	no	10	min 1, max 25 Results per page (1-25).

Unknown keys are rejected with 400 invalid_request.

Rules the schema cannot express

Checked after schema validation; violations return 400 invalid_request with a plain message.

Provide query, author or subject; an empty selector is refused.

Examples

By title

curl

curl -s -X POST https://api.powerups-ai.store/v1/capabilities/books.search/execute \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AIPA_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query":"dune","num":5}'

By author and subject

curl

curl -s -X POST https://api.powerups-ai.store/v1/capabilities/books.search/execute \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AIPA_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"author":"ursula le guin","subject":"science fiction"}'

No recorded response is published for this capability yet. The envelope is the ExecuteResponse component (see sessions and records); the record keys below are what the adapter emits. A first call with the example above returns search_id, the records and the charge.

Result record

Every item in results[] carries record_id and title (contract, always present) and usually url and snippet. The keys below are the documented tier: produced deterministically by this capability, omitted when the source has no value, checked against recorded source fixtures in our test suite, and published as the BooksSearchRecord component (all optional, extra keys allowed) so generated clients type them. The wire schema itself still validates only the base keys. See stability tiers.

Record keys of books.search
Key	Type	Presence
authors	string[]	when the source has it
first_published	integer	when the source has it
editions	integer	when the source has it
rating	number	when the source has it
subjects	string[]	when the source has it
isbn	string	when the source has it
cover_url	string	when the source has it

Caveats

Records carry no snippet.

Follow-ups

Paging: Provider page number; more fetches the next page from the source. Send { "search_id": "…", "action": "more" } while has_more is true; tolerate an empty page and stop after a bounded number of pages.
Update: Re-run with changed parameters (merged into the stored query); page state resets, search_id stays. Params accept any subset of the request fields (BooksSearchUpdateParams).
Record actions:
- details: Description, subjects, editions with ISBNs, links.
Detail behaviour: Free provider lookup on first call; repeats are cached. details is a free Open Library work lookup.

record action

curl -s -X POST https://api.powerups-ai.store/v1/follow-up \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AIPA_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"record_id":"rec_…","action":"details"}'

Record detail objects of this capability are provider-shaped: documented by observation, not by schema. Full follow-up semantics: follow-up.

Typed client

With types generated from the public document (see types, client and samples) the call is path-keyed and the body is checked at compile time:

TypeScript (openapi-fetch)

const { data, error } = await client.POST("/v1/capabilities/books.search/execute", {
  body: {
    "query": "dune",
    "num": 5
  },
});
if (error) throw new Error(`${error.error.code}: ${error.error.message}`);
for (const record of data.results) console.log(record.record_id, record.title);