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airbnb

Introduction

What airbnb is, how it is put together, and which surfaces it reads.

airbnb reads public Airbnb data the way a logged-out browser does: location autocomplete, a single listing, a stay search by place, a listing's reviews, its availability and nightly prices, a host profile and the host's listings, and experience search. It is a single binary. It speaks to Airbnb over plain HTTPS, lifts the data out of the data-deferred-state-0 JSON island a listing page embeds and the internal GraphQL endpoint its own web client calls, and gets out of your way. There is no API key, no login, and nothing to run alongside it.

How it is built

  • A library package (airbnb) holds the web and GraphQL client, the listing page island parser, and the typed data models. It paces requests, sends a browser User-Agent because that is what a logged-out reader looks like, caches on disk, and retries the transient failures any public site throws under load.
  • A domain (airbnb/domain.go) declares each operation once on the any-cli/kit framework. That single declaration becomes a CLI command, an HTTP route, an MCP tool, and a resource-URI dereference. It is the one place you add to the tool.
  • A thin cmd/airbnb hands the assembled app to kit.Run, which builds the command tree and the serve and mcp surfaces.

One operation, four surfaces

Because an operation is surface-neutral, the same room you run on the command line is also a route and a tool:

airbnb room 12345                 # the command
airbnb serve --addr :7777         # GET /v1/room/12345
airbnb mcp                        # the room tool, over stdio
ant get airbnb://room/12345       # the URI dereference (via a host)

What anonymous access reaches

Airbnb fronts its whole site with an edge bot manager (Cloudflare and DataDome) that classifies a request before the application sees it, on IP reputation and TLS fingerprint, and hard-walls datacenter IPs. airbnb sorts the surfaces into what works regardless and what is gated, and never pretends the line is elsewhere.

Works from any network, offline:

  • ref id, ref url (pure string resolution, no request)

Walled from datacenter IPs, best-effort (everything live):

  • room (the /rooms/ page island)
  • search (the StaysSearch GraphQL operation)
  • reviews (the StaysPdpReviewsQuery operation)
  • calendar (the PdpAvailabilityCalendar operation)
  • host show, host listings (the GetUserProfile and BeehiveUserListings operations)
  • experiences (the ExperiencesSearch operation)
  • suggest (the api/v2 autocomplete)

From a home or mobile network the best-effort surfaces usually answer; from a datacenter they hit the edge wall and exit 4. There is no official API to fall back to, so the only remedy the tool names is to run from a residential or mobile network. It does not forge a TLS fingerprint and does not rent or rotate IPs to get past the edge: it reads what a logged-out browser reads, the way it reads it. Every live read is best-effort behind the edge; there is no live surface that is reliable from any network.

Records carry only fields a logged-out reader can fill. There is no trip, no message thread, no wishlist, no host dashboard, and no payout data, because none of that exists without an account. A listing shows the title, the description, the icon highlights, the capacity and room breakdown, the sleeping arrangements, the amenities, the house rules with the check-in and checkout times, the area, the guest rating and its six category scores, the full photo gallery, and the host a visitor sees with their public photo; a search card carries its photo carousel and any struck-through original price; a review carries the stay descriptor, the reviewer's photo, and a link to the reviewer's own profile; a host carries the response time and where they live. A field a page does not show is left empty rather than guessed.

A nightly price only exists for specific dates, so room and search leave the price empty unless you give --checkin and --checkout (with --adults and --children).

Scope

airbnb is a read-only client over data Airbnb already serves publicly. It reads that data and shapes it for you. That narrow scope keeps it a single small binary with no database, no daemon, and no setup.

airbnb is an independent tool and is not affiliated with Airbnb.

Next: install it, then take the quick start.

4 min read