Developers

BureauCat for developers

Everything in BureauCat is available over a documented REST API. Use it to file tasks from scripts, sync work from other tools, or let an AI agent read and update tasks on your behalf.

Resources

• API reference: interactive docs for every endpoint
• OpenAPI spec: machine-readable spec of the REST API (/api/v1/openapi.json on any instance)
• Releases: bureaucat binaries for Linux and macOS (amd64, arm64)
• llms.txt: a summary of BureauCat for AI agents

Authentication

Create a personal access token under Settings in the app. Tokens start with bcat_ and are either read-only (GET requests only) or read-write. Send the token as a Bearer token. All routes live under /api/v1/, and errors come back as JSON with a message field.

Quickstart

# Who am I?
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $BUREAUCAT_TOKEN" \
  https://demo.bureaucat.org/api/v1/me

# Tasks assigned to me
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $BUREAUCAT_TOKEN" \
  https://demo.bureaucat.org/api/v1/me/tasks

# Projects I can see
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $BUREAUCAT_TOKEN" \
  https://demo.bureaucat.org/api/v1/projects

CLI

The bureaucat binary is both the server and a command-line client. Download it from GitHub releases, then:

bureaucat login --url https://demo.bureaucat.org --token $BUREAUCAT_TOKEN
bureaucat mytasks
bureaucat projects
bureaucat task create DEVOPS --title "Renew vendor contract"
bureaucat comment DEVOPS-780 "Approved, go ahead"

Self-hosting

Run the binary or the codingcoffee/bureaucat Docker image with PostgreSQL. Set DATABASE_URL and JWT_SECRET (32+ characters), then start it with bureaucat serve --migrate. The web app and API are served from one port (default 1341).