liquid-api 0.49.2

Zapier for AI agents. Connect to any API on the fly.

Liquid

Connect your AI agent to anything.

APIs, databases, and other agents — discovered automatically, read and write, through one stable, token-efficient, self-healing interface. No per-service connector to write or maintain: Liquid learns each one, and re-learns it when it changes.

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What an agent can reach through Liquid

One agent-facing API (fetch · query · write) over everything an agent might need to touch — Liquid figures out how to talk to it so the agent doesn't have to:

• Web APIs — REST/JSON, GraphQL, SOAP/WSDL, gRPC, WebSocket
• Other agents & tools — any MCP server, A2A agents, ChatGPT-plugin manifests
• Databases — Postgres (+ pgvector), MySQL/MariaDB, SQLite, DuckDB, SQL Server, Neo4j (graph), MongoDB (documents), Redis (key-value)

Point it at a https://… endpoint, a postgres://… / mongodb://… / redis://… DSN, a grpc://… target, or another MCP server — discovery identifies the interface, learns its shape, and hands your agent typed records. The same fetch/query/write works regardless of what's underneath. No per-service connector to hand-write; the integration maintains itself when the upstream changes.

# A web API it has never seen — no spec, no connector, no auth
adapter = await liquid.get_or_create(
    "https://api.openbrewerydb.org/v1/breweries",
    target_model={"name": "str", "city": "str", "country": "str"},
    auto_approve=True,
)
breweries = await liquid.fetch(adapter)            # typed records

# A database is just another interface — same API, and it writes too
db = await liquid.get_or_create("postgresql://reader@host/shop",
                                target_model={"id": "int", "email": "str"},
                                auto_approve=True)
orders = await liquid.fetch(db, "/public/orders")
await liquid.write(db, "/public/orders", op="insert",
                   values={"email": "[e-mail]", "total_cents": 9900},
                   allow_write=True)               # opt-in; mutates the store

You hand-write no connector and no schema: an LLM learns the interface once at setup (databases introspect themselves and skip even that), and the integration repairs itself when the upstream drifts. The runtime is plain deterministic transport — predictable cost, reproducible behavior, nothing to babysit.

Built for the constraints real agents hit

Reaching everything is half of it. The other half is that agents pay for every token, get confused by inconsistent shapes, and can't parse error prose. Liquid answers each with a concrete primitive — all shipped, all on PyPI.

Context-budget control

# Search / aggregate server-side instead of fetch-then-filter — 10-100x fewer tokens
orders = await liquid.search(adapter, "/orders",
    where={"total_cents": {"$gt": 10000}, "status": "paid"}, limit=20)

stats = await liquid.aggregate(adapter, "/orders",
    group_by="status", agg={"total_cents": "sum", "id": "count"})

hits = await liquid.text_search(adapter, "/tickets", "shipping delay")  # BM25-lite

data = await liquid.fetch(adapter, "/orders", max_tokens=2000)      # budget cap
data = await liquid.fetch(adapter, "/customers", verbosity="terse") # id + 1-2 fields

Cross-source normalization

liquid = Liquid(..., normalize_output=True)
# Stripe {amount:1000,currency:"usd"} · PayPal {value:"10.00",currency_code:"USD"}
#   → Money(amount_cents=1000, currency="USD", amount_decimal=Decimal("10.00"))

Timestamps (Unix / ISO 8601 / RFC 2822) collapse to UTC datetime; pagination envelopes ({data:[…]} / {results:[…]} / Link headers) flatten; ID fields normalize across id / _id / uuid / *_id.

Canonical intents — one mental model across services

await liquid.execute_intent(adapter, "charge_customer",
    {"customer_id": "cus_xyz", "amount_cents": 9999, "currency": "USD"})
# Same intent on Stripe / Braintree / Square / Adyen — 71 canonical intents

Structured recovery — agents self-heal without parsing text

try:
    await liquid.fetch(adapter, "/orders")
except LiquidError as e:
    if e.recovery and e.recovery.next_action:
        await agent.call_tool(e.recovery.next_action.tool, e.recovery.next_action.args)

Every error carries a Recovery with next_action: ToolCall, retry_safe, and retry_after_seconds. 401 → store_credentials. 404/410 → repair_adapter. 429 → retry after the given delay. And when the upstream's schema drifts, adapters self-heal (repair_adapter) — the agent keeps working.

Predictable cost — know before you call

est = await liquid.estimate_fetch(adapter, "/orders")
# FetchEstimate(expected_items=250, expected_tokens=52_000, confidence="high", …)
if est.expected_tokens < my_budget:
    data = await liquid.fetch(adapter, "/orders")

Tools emitted by to_tools() carry a metadata block (cost_credits, typical_latency_ms, cached, idempotent, side_effects, related_tools) so the agent can reason about which tool to pick — and ambient tools (liquid_check_quota, liquid_list_adapters, …) let it ask about state instead of memorizing it.

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Measured impact

Deterministic benchmarks on realistic agent tasks (500-order, 200-ticket fixtures, mocked HTTP) — reproducible via python -m benchmarks.run:

Task	Metric	Baseline	With Liquid	Delta
Find 10 orders over $100	tokens	75,482	1,519	−98%
Revenue by status (aggregate)	tokens	75,482	115	−100%
Fetch customer (id+email only)	tokens	424	12	−97%
Recover from 401	structured next_action	no	yes	—
Find the shipping ticket	tokens	14,588	154	−99%
Stripe↔PayPal consistency	field overlap	0.11	1.00	+9×
Skip wasted call via estimate	tokens	14,943	0	−100%
max_tokens=2000 budget cap	tokens	14,943	1,999	−87%

Full methodology + per-task breakdown: benchmarks/RESULTS.md.

Install

pip install liquid-api               # core + bundled MCP server (the `liquid-mcp` command)
pip install 'liquid-api[litellm]'    # any of 100+ LLM providers (or [gemini] / [anthropic])
pip install 'liquid-api[grpc]'       # gRPC transport (reflection)
pip install 'liquid-api[ws]'         # WebSocket transport
pip install 'liquid-api[pg]'         # Postgres / pgvector (asyncpg)
pip install 'liquid-api[mysql]'      # MySQL / MariaDB (aiomysql); SQLite needs no extra
pip install 'liquid-api[neo4j]'      # Neo4j graph (Bolt / Cypher)
pip install 'liquid-api[duckdb]'     # DuckDB (embedded analytics)
pip install 'liquid-api[mssql]'      # SQL Server (ODBC; needs a system ODBC driver)
pip install 'liquid-api[mongodb]'    # MongoDB (collections as endpoints)
pip install 'liquid-api[redis]'      # Redis (keyspace namespaces as endpoints)
# Framework integrations
pip install liquid-langchain   # LangChain / LangGraph
pip install liquid-crewai      # CrewAI

The core is dependency-free — every backend's library is an optional extra, imported only when used.

See it work — live, no pre-config

Point Liquid at an API it has never seen (no adapter, no OpenAPI spec, no auth) and get typed records back — you write no connector; discovery + mapping is the only place a model runs. Runnable end to end via examples/live_quickstart.py:

Connecting to an API Liquid has never seen:
  https://api.openbrewerydb.org/v1/breweries

  discovery method : rest_heuristic
  mapped fields    : ['name', 'city', 'state', 'country']
  LLM calls so far : 2  (discovery + mapping)

fetch() -> 50 typed records; first 3:
   {'name': '(405) Brewing Co', 'city': 'Norman', 'state': 'Oklahoma', 'country': 'United States'}
   {'name': '(512) Brewing Co', 'city': 'Austin', 'state': 'Texas', 'country': 'United States'}
   {'name': '1 of Us Brewing Company', 'city': 'Mount Pleasant', 'state': 'Wisconsin', 'country': 'United States'}

  LLM calls during fetch : 0
  LLM calls on 2nd fetch : 0

You wrote no connector, no schema, no auth glue — Liquid learned the interface for you, and will re-learn it if it changes. That's the point: integrations you don't build or babysit.

Run as an MCP server (open source, self-hosted)

Expose the engine to any MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Claude Code) — it runs in your own process, no cloud, no account, no lock-in:

pip install liquid-api
export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...        # or GEMINI_API_KEY / ANTHROPIC_API_KEY,
                                    # or OPENAI_BASE_URL=http://localhost:11434/v1 for local (Ollama/vLLM)
liquid-mcp                          # or: python -m liquid.mcp_server

Zero-install with uvx (the liquid-mcp package makes the command run by name) — Claude Code:

claude mcp add liquid --scope user -e OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-... -- uvx liquid-mcp

Claude Desktop / any MCP client:

{ "mcpServers": { "liquid": {
  "command": "uvx",
  "args": ["liquid-mcp"],
  "env": { "OPENAI_API_KEY": "sk-..." }
} } }

(Or after pip install liquid-api, drop uvx and use "command": "liquid-mcp" directly.)

Tools: liquid_connect (discover + map any interface), liquid_fetch, liquid_query (server-side search/aggregate), liquid_estimate (pre-flight cost/size, no call), liquid_list_adapters, liquid_discover. The surface is read-only by default; start the server with LIQUID_ALLOW_WRITES=1 to also expose liquid_execute (database insert/update/delete). Adapters and credentials persist under ~/.liquid. Backed by any LLM — OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic, any OpenAI-compatible/local endpoint via base_url, 100+ providers via LiteLLM, or your own function through CallableBackend.

Quick start — LangGraph agent

from liquid import Liquid, InMemoryCache, RateLimiter
from liquid._defaults import InMemoryVault, InMemoryAdapterRegistry, CollectorSink
from liquid_langchain import LiquidToolkit
from langgraph.prebuilt import create_react_agent
from langchain_openai import ChatOpenAI

liquid = Liquid(
    llm=my_llm, vault=InMemoryVault(), sink=CollectorSink(),
    registry=InMemoryAdapterRegistry(), cache=InMemoryCache(), rate_limiter=RateLimiter(),
    normalize_output=True,    # cross-source canonical shapes
    include_meta=True,        # _meta block on every response
)

adapter = await liquid.get_or_create(
    "https://api.shopify.com",
    target_model={"id": "str", "total_cents": "int", "customer_email": "str"},
    credentials={"access_token": "shpat_..."},
    auto_approve=True,
)

tools = LiquidToolkit(adapter, liquid).get_tools()
agent = create_react_agent(ChatOpenAI(model="gpt-4o-mini"), tools)
result = await agent.ainvoke(
    {"messages": [("user", "Find 5 recent orders over $100 from VIP customers")]}
)

The agent's tools come with rich descriptions (WHEN to use, NOT FOR what, return shape, cost), structured recovery on every error, and server-side search so it never pulls 500 orders to find 5.

Every interface, one API

Discovery identifies the target and tags each endpoint with a protocol; a pluggable transport driver runs it — but the agent-facing API (fetch, query, write, mapping, recovery, cache, rate limits) is identical across all of them.

Interface	Runtime	Write	Install
REST / HTTP+JSON	✅	✅ actions (POST/PUT/PATCH/DELETE)	—
GraphQL	✅ query + Relay pagination	✅ mutations	—
SOAP / WSDL	✅ stdlib XML	—	—
gRPC	✅ unary + server-streaming (reflection)	—	liquid-api[grpc]
WebSocket	✅ bounded batch reads + subscribe	—	liquid-api[ws]
MCP (agent)	✅ call tools / read resources	✅ tool calls	—
A2A (agent)	✅ JSON-RPC message/send to AgentCard skills	—	—
Postgres (+pgvector)	✅ tables/views, filters, pagination, vector search	✅	liquid-api[pg]
MySQL / MariaDB	✅ tables/views, filters, pagination	✅	liquid-api[mysql]
SQLite	✅ tables/views, filters, pagination	✅	— (stdlib)
DuckDB	✅ tables/views, filters, pagination	✅	liquid-api[duckdb]
SQL Server	✅ tables/views, OFFSET/FETCH pagination	✅	liquid-api[mssql]
Neo4j (graph)	✅ labels/relationship types, property filters	✅ node CRUD	liquid-api[neo4j]
MongoDB (document)	✅ collections, field filters, pagination	✅	liquid-api[mongodb]
Redis (key-value)	✅ keyspace namespaces, typed values, SCAN paging	✅ SET/HSET/DEL	liquid-api[redis]

Read and write. liquid.write(adapter, endpoint, op="insert", values={...}, allow_write=True) mutates any database (SQL INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE, Mongo insert/update/delete, Redis SET/HSET/DEL, Neo4j node CRUD); web/agent writes go through verified actions. Identifiers come from introspection and values are parameterized; update/delete require a where (no blanket mutations); writes are off until you opt in with allow_write=True.

Discovery is automatic — and identifies on the fly. Before the pipeline runs, a fingerprint step names the target: a bare host:port is normalized by well-known port (db:5432 → postgresql://db:5432), and liquid.identify(url) answers "what is this, and is its driver installed?" with an install hint when a backend is missing. (Identifying a protocol is feasible on the fly; speaking a new authenticated binary protocol isn't — so unknowns are named, not guessed at.)

Discovery	Where it looks	Cost
Databases	catalog introspection (postgres://, mysql://, mongodb://, redis://, neo4j://, …)	Low
gRPC / WebSocket	server reflection / frame sampling	Low
MCP / A2A / Plugin	/mcp, /.well-known/agent-card.json, /.well-known/ai-plugin.json	Low
OpenAPI / GraphQL / SOAP	spec, introspection, or WSDL	Low
REST heuristic	common paths + LLM interpretation	Medium
Browser	Playwright capturing network	High

Add a backend without writing code. For the SQL family the contract is declarative enough to be data: a dialect manifest (quoting, placeholder style, pagination, introspection SQL, error map, DBAPI2 module) registered via register_sql_manifest({...}) installs a working driver + discovery — so a new SQL / wire-compatible store (CockroachDB, ClickHouse, any DBAPI2 driver), even one fetched from the network as JSON, connects without a release. New protocols otherwise plug in via the liquid.transport.ProtocolDriver protocol; SQL backends share a dialect-aware core, so a new one is a ~80-line adapter.

2,500+ APIs are pre-discovered and pre-mapped in the global catalog — most popular services connect with zero discovery cost.

Architecture

URL / DSN                       Agent
   ↓                              ↑
 FINGERPRINT → DISCOVERY        FETCH · QUERY · WRITE · SEARCH · AGGREGATE
   ↓                              ↑
 one ProtocolDriver per          Deterministic per-protocol transport
 interface:                        • Query DSL (server-side filter)
   REST GraphQL SOAP gRPC WS       • Output normalization
   MCP A2A · SQL graph doc KV      • Verbosity / max_tokens / _meta
   ↓                              • Structured recovery + self-heal
 APISchema                        • Rate-limit-aware token bucket
   ↓                              • Response cache (Cache-Control aware)
 AI MAPPING (setup only)          • Empirical probing data (Cloud)
   ↓
 AdapterConfig

AI participates at setup only. Runtime is pure transport with transforms — no LLM per call, predictable cost, reproducible behavior (except search_nl, which caches its compilations).

Swappable components

Every cross-cutting concern is a Protocol you can replace:

from liquid.protocols import (
    Vault, LLMBackend, DataSink, KnowledgeStore, AdapterRegistry, CacheStore,
)

In-memory implementations ship for all of them; liquid-cloud provides PostgresVault, RedisCache, etc. for hosted deployments.

Framework support

adapter.to_tools(format="anthropic")   # Claude tool use
adapter.to_tools(format="openai")      # OpenAI function calling
adapter.to_tools(format="mcp")         # MCP (Claude Desktop, Cursor)
from liquid_crewai import LiquidCrewToolkit  # CrewAI

Ecosystem

Package	Purpose
liquid-api	Core library (this repo)
liquid-langchain	LangChain / LangGraph integration
liquid-crewai	CrewAI integration
liquid-cli	liquid init quickstart
Liquid Cloud	Hosted service + global catalog + empirical probing

Comparison

Feature	Liquid	Zapier	LangChain tool	DIY
Auto-discovers any interface (no curated connector)	yes	no	no	no
APIs + databases + agents in one layer	yes	partial	no	no
Read and write through one API	yes	yes	partial	no
Server-side search / aggregate	yes	no	no	partial
Cross-source output normalization	yes	partial	no	no
Structured recovery with next_action	yes	no	no	no
Self-healing on schema drift	yes	no	no	no
Pre-flight cost estimate	yes	no	no	no
MCP + A2A + LangChain + CrewAI native	yes	no	partial	no
Open source	yes	no	yes	n/a

Documentation

• Quickstart — discover → map → fetch, plus the no-LLM runtime
• OSS vs. Cloud — the honest boundary: free/self-hosted vs. hosted
• Architecture
• Extending — implement your own Vault / LLM / Sink
• Write operations spec