Openlibrary cli

openlibrary-cli — Book Metadata from Open Library

Search books and authors, look up works and ISBNs, and fetch detailed metadata from the public Open Library API. No API key, no registration — just works.

Setup

No authentication or API keys needed. The Open Library API is fully public.

# Optional: set your email to help with rate limiting (included in User-Agent):
export OL_EMAIL="[email protected]"

Only Python 3.8+ and the requests package are required. --help and --dry-run work without any setup.

Essential Commands

search — Search books by keyword

openlibrary-cli search --query "dune"                       # basic search (20 results)
openlibrary-cli search --query "dune" --limit 5             # just the top 5
openlibrary-cli search --query "dune" --sort new            # newest first
openlibrary-cli search --query "dune" --sort rating         # highest rated first
openlibrary-cli search --query "dune" --sort title          # alphabetical by title
openlibrary-cli search --query "foundation" --lang fr       # French editions
openlibrary-cli search --query "dune" --json                # machine-readable JSON

Shows: title, first publish year, authors, edition count. Supports --sort (editions, new, old, rating, title), --lang, --offset, and --availability.

search-authors — Search authors by name

openlibrary-cli search-authors --query "asimov"             # search authors
openlibrary-cli search-authors --query "asimov" --limit 5   # top 5
openlibrary-cli search-authors --query "asimov" --json      # machine-readable

Shows: name, birth/death years, author key, top work.

author — Get author details by key

openlibrary-cli author OL23919A                             # Isaac Asimov
openlibrary-cli author OL34184A                             # Ursula K. Le Guin
openlibrary-cli author OL23919A --json                      # full biography

Shows: name, birth/death dates, biography (up to 500 chars), Wikipedia link, personal name. Author keys are the OL#####A identifiers from search results.

work — Get work details by key

openlibrary-cli work OL123W                                 # work by key
openlibrary-cli work OL81699W                               # "Foundation"
openlibrary-cli work OL81699W --json                        # full description

Shows: title, author keys, subjects, description (up to 500 chars). Work keys are the OL#####W identifiers found in search results.

isbn — Lookup a book by ISBN

openlibrary-cli isbn 9780451524935                           # ISBN lookup
openlibrary-cli isbn 9780553382563                           # another book
openlibrary-cli isbn 9780451524935 --json                    # full edition metadata

Shows: title, author(s), page count, publish date, publisher, subjects (top 5). Accepts both ISBN-10 and ISBN-13.

Global Flags

These flags work anywhere in the command — before or after the subcommand:

openlibrary-cli --json search --query "dune"                # JSON output
openlibrary-cli search --query "dune" --json                # same result, after subcommand
openlibrary-cli --dry-run search --query "dune"             # preview without API call
openlibrary-cli --quiet search --query "dune"               # suppress diagnostic output
openlibrary-cli --verbose author OL23919A                   # verbose logging
openlibrary-cli --dry-run isbn 9780451524935                # see what URL would be used

Flag	Effect
--json	Output machine-readable JSON instead of human-readable text
--dry-run	Show what API call would be made without executing it
--quiet	Suppress non-essential diagnostic output
--verbose	Enable verbose/debug logging

Known Gotchas

• Public API, rate-limited — No API key is needed, but Open Library enforces rate limits on unauthenticated requests. Set OL_EMAIL in your environment to include a contact email in the User-Agent header for better rate limit treatment.
• ISBN lookup uses an edition endpoint — The isbn command fetches /isbn/{isbn}.json which returns edition-level metadata (publisher, page count, publish date). For work-level metadata (description, subjects of the underlying work), use the work command with the work key from search results.
• Search results are not stable — Open Library's search index can return slightly different results for the same query over time. Use --sort and --limit for reproducible result sets.
• Author keys from search are relative paths — Search results return key as /authors/OL23919A. The CLI strips the prefix so you can use the bare key (e.g. OL23919A) directly with the author command.
• Biographies and descriptions may be nested — The Open Library API sometimes returns bio/description as a dict with a value key instead of a plain string (e.g. {"type": "/type/text", "value": "..."}). The CLI handles this automatically.
• No lazy auth — Unlike other CLI skills, no authentication setup is needed at all. The API is fully public, so --help, --dry-run, and all commands work without any env vars.
• Pagination — Use --offset to paginate through search results. The CLI defaults to 20 results and does not auto-paginate.
• Work vs Edition — A "work" is the abstract creative work (e.g. "Dune"). An "edition" is a specific published version (e.g. the 1965 hardcover). The work command returns work-level data; the isbn command returns edition-level data. The search command returns work-level results with edition counts.

References

• scripts/openlibrary-cli — The CLI binary. Built following the cli-builder patterns: non-interactive, --json, --dry-run, --quiet, --verbose, dual-output via emit(), structured logging.
• Open Library API Docs — Official API documentation.
• Open Library — The open, editable library catalog.