# PubNub — API Agent Score

> Score: 83/100 (Grade: A) | Domain: pubnub.com | Rubric: 1.0.0 | Checked: July 24, 2026

PubNub scored 83/100 (A), classified "ai-ready".

[View full report](https://www.postman.com/ai/ai-ready-apis/company/pubnub)
[All organizations](https://www.postman.com/ai/ai-ready-apis/llms.txt)

## Summary

- Overall: 83/100 (A)
- Classification: ai-ready

## Category Scores

- API Design: 84/100 (A)
- Developer Experience: 67/100 (C)
- Agent Discovery: 91/100 (A+)
- Agent Understanding: 75/100 (B)
- Agent Usability: 96/100 (A+)

## Check Results

### API Design

- [warn] Machine-readable, versioned contract — info.version="1.0.0" set but no versioning scheme (URL / header / media type) detected. Investigated: spec 88%, docs 75%.
- [warn] Schema coverage & depth — 0/1 (0%) enum-like params are realized as constrained types (not bare strings). Investigated: sdk 86%, spec 50%.
- [pass] Security & governance hygiene — No credential-shaped strings detected in spec. Investigated: spec 100%, wellknown 0%.
- [warn] Auth declared & discoverable — No securitySchemes declared. Investigated: docs 50%, spec 25%.
- [pass] Example coverage — 100% example coverage across params + responses. Investigated: spec 100%, docs 100%, sdk 100%.

### Developer Experience

- [pass] Code samples in docs — Code samples in 9 language(s) across docs (top: javascript, python, swift); 2/18 pages have ≥ 2 languages on the same page. Investigated: docs 100%.
- [pass] Description completeness — 70% description completeness (target 90%+). Investigated: spec 100%, sdk 91%.
- [pass] Changelog published — Newest official SDK activity 0 day(s) ago. Investigated: sdk 100%, spec 0%, docs 0%.
- [warn] Quickstart present — Quickstart page reachable (1 variants scanned starting at https://www.pubnub.com/) but no runnable code sample detected in HTML or .md variant. Investigated: docs 50%.
- [fail] Self-service developer portal — Signup page is sales-gated (contact-sales/request-access language detected). Investigated: docs 0%.

### Agent Discovery

- [pass] Docs reachable, not hard auth-gated — All 50 sampled pages are publicly accessible. Investigated: docs 100%.
- [pass] Registry & SDK presence — Indexed on Context7 (pubnub/ruby, 50 snippets). Investigated: docs 100%, sdk 100%, cli 100%, mcp 50%, wellknown 0%.
- [warn] llms.txt present, valid & comprehensive — No llms.txt directive found in HTML of any of 50 sampled pages. Investigated: docs 75%, sdk 0%.
- [warn] Crawlable / AEO — Sitemap present (8 entries) but carries no lastmod values. Investigated: wellknown 75%.

### Agent Understanding

- [pass] Machine-readable errors (RFC 9457) — Only 1 distinct 4xx/5xx codes documented (plus 0 "default" catch-all responses). Investigated: docs 100%, spec 50%, sdk 50%.
- [pass] Operation purpose clarity — 98% of operations have a clear summary + operationId an agent can select on. Investigated: spec 100%.
- [warn] Agent-navigable, token-efficient docs — 28 of 50 pages have substantive content differences between markdown and HTML (avg 31% missing). Investigated: docs 56%.
- [warn] Docs structured data — JSON-LD on 1/2 assessed pages, but coverage is sparse or dateModified is missing. Investigated: docs 50%.
- [warn] Description consistency across surfaces — Mean pairwise description similarity across 3 surfaces (spec, docs, sdk) is 3% (threshold 35% for full credit).
- [fail] Agent instructions file (AGENTS.md) — No AGENTS.md at the site root or /.well-known/. Investigated: wellknown 0%.

### Agent Usability

- [pass] Idempotency documented — Built-in retry machinery is present (grep-derived). Investigated: sdk 100%, spec 0%, docs 0%.
- [pass] Rate-limit signaling — rate-limit behavior documented in the docs site at https://www.pubnub.com/docs/general/setup/limits. Investigated: spec 100%, docs 100%.
- [pass] Pagination documented & consistent — Pagination params detected on 17 list endpoint(s). Investigated: docs 100%, spec 88%, sdk 0%.
- [pass] Sandbox separation — Sandbox environments are exposed (sandbox). Investigated: sdk 100%, spec 0%, docs 0%.
- [warn] Runnable collection with test scripts — No test scripts found in the workspace's collections. Investigated: platform 50%.

## Executive Summary

PubNub's API program shows strong foundations in API design, discoverability, and runnable usability — partners and their agents can already find and execute against your APIs reliably. The most urgent gaps are in agent-facing context and self-service onboarding: there is no dedicated instructions file to orient AI agents, and partners currently lack a frictionless, self-service portal to go from discovery to first call without assistance. Prioritizing these two areas will meaningfully expand the partner cohort you can serve without manual intervention and ensure AI agents can correctly interpret and act on your API surface.