Test placeholder data

Skill SkillMedev/live-data/skills/test-placeholder-data

Free, keyless, liveness-verified APIs for real data - Claude executes instead of deliberating.

Install

npx -y skills add SkillMedev/live-data --skill test-placeholder-data

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

0 stars0 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Use when building a demo, prototype, or tutorial that needs realistic remote data - "fake products/users/todos for this app", "an API I can hit while wiring up fetch", "placeholder images", "seed this UI with something that looks real", or teaching HTTP/CRUD against a live endpoint. DummyJSON is the default (rich e-commerce-shaped data, full fake CRUD, no key); JSONPlaceholder, RandomUser, and Lorem Picsum cover the rest. Do NOT use for generating local test fixtures or factories inside a test suite - use test-data-builder instead; do NOT use when the task needs real-world data (weather, prices, countries) - route through public-data-api-picker.

SKILL.md

5.9 KB, ~1.3k tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

Test & Placeholder Data APIs

Wire a demo against live fake data in one call. The mistake this prevents: hand-writing a 40-line mock array (or standing up a local json-server) when a keyless hosted API already serves richer, more realistic data - and the demo then never exercises real fetch/loading/error paths.

Ranked APIs

DummyJSON (dummyjson.com) - DEFAULT. 190+ products, users, carts, posts, recipes with realistic fields; search, pagination, field selection; fake write endpoints for full CRUD demos. No key.
JSONPlaceholder (jsonplaceholder.typicode.com) - the classic minimal set (posts/comments/todos/users) when the tutorial audience expects it or you need the flattest possible shape. No key.
RandomUser (randomuser.me) - generated people with names, emails, avatars, addresses. Use for user-directory and profile-card UIs. No key.
Lorem Picsum (picsum.photos) - placeholder photos at any size. No key.

Procedure

Match the API to the demo's domain: e-commerce/dashboard → DummyJSON products or carts; social/feed → DummyJSON posts or JSONPlaceholder; people/profiles → RandomUser; image slots → Picsum.
Make pagination and search real - DummyJSON supports it server-side, so demo the actual pattern instead of slicing a local array (templates below).
Seed deterministically when it matters. RandomUser output changes per call; pin it with &seed=demo so screenshots and tests reproduce. Picsum: use /id/{n}/ URLs, not /random.
Label fake writes. DummyJSON's POST/PUT/DELETE return plausible responses but persist nothing - say so in the demo README/comments so nobody files a bug that "saves don't stick".

Ask the user only if missing: domain of data (default: products), row count (default: 10), whether writes are needed (default: read-only).

URL templates + real response shapes

DummyJSON - read, search, paginate, select:

https://dummyjson.com/products/1
https://dummyjson.com/products?limit=10&skip=20&select=title,price,rating
https://dummyjson.com/products/search?q=phone
https://dummyjson.com/users        https://dummyjson.com/carts        https://dummyjson.com/posts

{"id":1,"title":"Essence Mascara Lash Princess","category":"beauty","price":9.99,
 "rating":2.56,"stock":99,"brand":"Essence","thumbnail":"...","images":["..."],
 "dimensions":{"width":15.14,"height":13.08},"reviews":[{"rating":2,"comment":"..."}]}

List endpoints wrap results: {"products":[...],"total":194,"skip":20,"limit":10} - read total for pager math. Fake CRUD: POST /products/add, PUT /products/1, DELETE /products/1 (echo back, no persistence).

JSONPlaceholder - flat classic resources:

https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1
https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts?userId=1
https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1/comments

{"userId":1,"id":1,"title":"sunt aut facere...","body":"quia et suscipit..."}

100 posts, 200 todos, 10 users; text is Latin filler. Writes are fake here too.

RandomUser - generated people:

https://randomuser.me/api/?results=25&nat=us,gb&seed=demo

{"results":[{"name":{"first":"Regina","last":"Fisher"},"email":"[email protected]",
  "location":{"city":"York","state":"Massachusetts","country":"United States"},
  "picture":{"large":"https://randomuser.me/api/portraits/women/88.jpg"},
  "login":{"uuid":"c305bcf6-..."}}],"info":{"seed":"demo","results":25}}

Top level is always results[] even for one user. Trim payload with &inc=name,email,picture.

Lorem Picsum - images:

https://picsum.photos/id/237/400/300          ← deterministic (dog photo, 400×300)
https://picsum.photos/seed/{any-string}/400/300   ← deterministic by seed
https://picsum.photos/v2/list?page=1&limit=30     ← JSON metadata: id, author, download_url

Image URLs 302-redirect to the file - fine in <img src>, but follow redirects when fetching programmatically. ?grayscale&blur=2 for effects.

Deliverable

Working fetch code (or curl) against the chosen endpoint with real pagination/search wired, deterministic seeds where repeatability matters, and an explicit note on any fake-write endpoints.

Do NOT use - reach for X instead

Local fixtures, factories, or builders inside a test suite - test-data-builder. This skill is for hosted fake data behind real HTTP.
Mocking a network call in unit tests - mock-stub-designer; don't point unit tests at live placeholder APIs (network flake becomes test flake).
Real stock photography with search, licensing, and attribution (Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay) - stock-photo-api; Picsum here is throwaway layout filler only.
Real data needs - weather-climate, geo-places, finance-fx, or the public-data-api-picker router. Demo data in a real feature is a bug.
Load testing - these are free community services; don't benchmark against them.

Quality bar

The demo exercises at least one real HTTP concern (loading state, pagination, or error path) that a hardcoded array could not.
Repeatable output wherever the UI is screenshotted or asserted on (seeds pinned).
Any fake-persistence endpoint is labeled as such where the next developer will see it.

Sourced and liveness-verified from the public-apis project (MIT).