Research and reading · Gutendex + Wikisource

classics.search

Searches Project Gutenberg (via Gutendex, with the Gutenberg OPDS catalogue as fallback) and Wikisource. details returns an excerpt and download links (plain text, EPUB, HTML).

Operation: POST /v1/capabilities/classics.search/execute
operationId: executeClassicsSearch
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/classics.search/execute, JSON, validated against the ClassicsSearchRequest component of the public OpenAPI document. Defaults are applied server-side, so an omitted optional field behaves exactly as its default.

Request fields of classics.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
language	string	no		min length 2, max length 2 ISO 639-1 code, e.g. "en".
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 or author; an empty selector is refused.

Examples

By title

curl

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

In French

curl

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

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 ClassicsSearchRecord 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 classics.search
Key	Type	Presence
source	"gutenberg" \| "wikisource"	always
authors	string[]	when the source has it
languages	string[]	when the source has it
subjects	string[]	when the source has it
downloads	integer	when the source has it
words	integer	when the source has it

Caveats

When the Gutendex index is unavailable the OPDS fallback keeps title, url, source and authors; a notes[] entry names what is absent (snippet, languages, subjects, download counts) and that the language filter was not applied.

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 (ClassicsSearchUpdateParams).
Record actions:
- details: Excerpt of the text plus download links.
Detail behaviour: Free provider lookup on first call; repeats are cached. details fetches an excerpt and download links from the free source.

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/classics.search/execute", {
  body: {
    "query": "meditations",
    "author": "aurelius"
  },
});
if (error) throw new Error(`${error.error.code}: ${error.error.message}`);
for (const record of data.results) console.log(record.record_id, record.title);