HTTP Requests: Connect to Any API

The HTTP capability is your agent’s “swiss army knife”—enabling it to talk to virtually any online service that has an API. If a service exists on the internet and exposes an API, your agent can interact with it. In this example, we simply asked the agent to “check the current weather in Stockholm using a suitable API.” The agent found a free weather API, made the HTTP request, parsed the JSON response, and presented the results in a readable table—all without any configuration.

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How it works

Once enabled, you simply tell your agent which API you want to interact with—either in the chat or in your instructions. The agent figures out how to call the API and handles the request for you.

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How the agent learns APIs

Think about what a human developer would need to work with an API—your agent needs the same things: Well-known APIs — For popular services (weather APIs, social platforms, major SaaS tools), the agent often knows how to use them already from the LLM’s training data. Things usually work right off the bat. Less familiar APIs — For niche or custom APIs, you have several options:

• Let it experiment — Ask the agent to try the API and figure it out through trial and error
• Point to documentation — Give the agent a URL to the API reference, or upload a PDF with the docs
• Use web search — Enable Web Search and ask the agent to research the API online
• Describe it yourself — If you know the API, just explain the endpoints and expected responses in the chat

The more context you provide, the faster the agent will succeed—especially for internal or proprietary APIs that don’t exist in public documentation.

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Guardrails and approval

You can require approval for every HTTP request your agent makes. In the capability settings, set Require Approval to “Yes”. When approval is required:

• The agent can attempt to make HTTP requests, but you (or another team member) must approve each one before it executes
• Notify Agent on approval controls whether the agent is notified when you approve, useful if it needs to continue with follow-up steps

This is similar to how approval works for email and SMS.

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When to use HTTP requests

The HTTP capability is ideal when:

• No existing capability — The service you need isn’t available as a built-in capability or MCP server
• Quick prototyping — You want to test an integration before investing in a proper setup
• Internal APIs — You have proprietary services or internal databases with REST endpoints
• Combining APIs — Your workflow requires calling multiple APIs in sequence

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Example use cases

Real-time data lookups:

• “Check the current Bitcoin price using a cryptocurrency API”
• “Get the latest exchange rate between USD and EUR”
• “Look up the shipping status for order #12345 via the carrier’s API”

Combining multiple APIs:

• “Convert this address to GPS coordinates, then find the nearest coffee shops using a places API”
• “Fetch the weather forecast, then post a summary to Slack”
• “Look up the company info from this domain, then add it to my CRM”

Prototyping integrations:

• “Connect to our internal inventory API and check stock levels for product SKU-1234”
• “Query our company’s time tracking API and summarize my hours this week”

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Real-world example: Office location analyzer

We built an HR agent that knows where all our employees live and helps analyze potential new office locations by calculating transit times for each person. This required chaining multiple APIs:

1. Geocoding API — Convert street addresses to GPS coordinates
2. Transit time API — Calculate commute times between coordinates
3. Map visualization — The agent built an interactive map to display the results

It took some iteration for the agent to discover which APIs to use and how to call them. But once it worked, we asked the agent to document the process—essentially “codifying” those API calls into its instructions so future requests are fast and reliable.

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Handling credentials

Some APIs require authentication (API keys, tokens, etc.). You can provide credentials directly to the agent in the chat or instructions:

“Use this API key for the weather service: abc123xyz”

For sensitive credentials, consider using a dedicated integration or MCP server that handles authentication securely.

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Available methods

The agent can use any standard HTTP method:

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Tips for reliability

Ask the agent to remember what worked. Once your agent successfully calls an API, ask it to update its instructions with the details—endpoint URLs, required headers, expected responses. This “codifies” the API and makes future calls instant. Start simple. Test with basic GET requests before building complex multi-step workflows. Provide documentation. If you have API docs, share them with the agent. The more context it has, the faster it can figure out the correct calls.

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FAQ

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