| name | anakin-wire |
| description | Use when a task targets a specific well-known website — extracting products, listings, prices, profiles, reviews or dashboard data from sites like Amazon, Walmart, LinkedIn, Airbnb or Zillow, or performing an interaction there such as submitting a form, adding to a cart, or posting content. Covers Anakin's Wire catalog of pre-built actions - wire_discover, wire_catalog, wire_read_action, wire_write_action, wire_identities, wire_login, wire_build. Check this before hand-scraping any popular site. |
Anakin Wire: pre-built site actions
Wire is a catalog of vetted, pre-built automation actions across hundreds of
popular websites. An action returns clean structured data — not markdown you
have to parse.
The single most important point
Wire is not login-only. Actions come in two kinds, and each has its own
execution tool:
- READ actions extract data and change nothing — search listings, fetch a
category's products, get a product's price/specs/reviews, read a profile, pull
dashboard metrics. Run with
wire_read_action.
- WRITE actions change state — submit a form, add to a cart, post or send
content, update account settings. Run with
wire_write_action.
Many read actions need no authentication at all. If you assume Wire is only
for logins and skip it, you will hand-scrape sites that already have a one-call
extractor. For any task on a recognizable site, try wire_discover first.
The loop
wire_discover (or wire_catalog) → check the action's type
├─ "read" → wire_read_action
└─ "write" → wire_write_action
↓ auth error only
wire_identities / wire_login → retry with credential_id
1. Find an action
wire_discover — natural-language intent → ranked candidate actions. Pass q
(e.g. "top phones on walmart", "search airbnb listings in Lisbon"), and
optionally limit (default 5). Returns each candidate's action_id, required
and optional params, credit cost, and whether auth is needed.wire_catalog — browse instead of guess. No arguments lists every supported
site and its action count. Pass a slug ("walmart", "amazon",
"linkedin") for that site's full action list with exact parameter schemas,
each action's type (read/write), auth_mode (none/optional/required),
credit cost, and login fields.
Use wire_discover when you know the intent, wire_catalog when you want to
see everything a site can do.
2. Run it — pick the tool that matches the action's type
Both take action_id plus params matching that action's schema, and both poll
the async job to completion for you. Confirm the action's type from
discovery before choosing — passing a write action to wire_read_action (or
the reverse) is an error, not a fallback.
wire_read_action — for type: "read". Most need no auth.wire_write_action — for type: "write". Most do need auth.
Neither executes payments or transfers funds; such actions are refused.
3. Authenticate, only if the action demands it
If execution returns AUTH_REQUIRED, AUTH_EXPIRED, or FORBIDDEN, the error
text tells you what to do. In short:
wire_identities — list saved identities and their credentials. Each
credential's id is the credential_id you pass. Filter with catalog_id.
Check the credential's status is active, not expired.wire_login — sign in to a credentials-mode site and get a usable
credential_id immediately. Pass catalog_slug and params matching that
catalog's login_input_schema (from wire_catalog). The password is never
stored — only an encrypted session.
Not every site supports password sign-in. Cookie-based sites use the dashboard
connect flow instead; when that applies, the error includes a connect_url to
give the user.
Never invent credentials. Ask the user, or send them to the connect_url.
When no action exists
wire_build requests a brand-new action: pass website_url and a specific
goal describing what to extract or do. Wire generates and auto-tests a
scraper, then publishes it.
- Async — returns
pending.
- Charges credits, automatically refunded if the build fails.
visibility defaults to private.- Rejected with
ACTION_EXISTS if similar actions exist; pass force: true to
override.
Only call this after wire_discover and wire_catalog confirm nothing
covers the site. Building duplicates wastes credits and time.
Choosing Wire vs. the alternatives
| Situation | Use |
|---|
| Recognizable site, want structured data | wire_read_action |
| Recognizable site, state-changing interaction | wire_write_action |
| Arbitrary/long-tail URL | scrape (anakin-web-data) |
| Whole-site ingestion | crawl (anakin-web-data) |
| Recognizable site, no action, recurring need | wire_build, then run it |
| Multi-step interaction, no action exists, one-off | browser_task (anakin-browser) |
| Need to watch an action's output over time | monitor_create with scope: "wire" (anakin-monitoring) |
Rule of thumb: if you could name the site to a colleague and they would
recognize it, check Wire before scraping it. Wire actions are faster and cheaper
than browser_task — always check wire_discover before driving a browser.
