API Surface

API surface

Cove exposes APIs for the application itself, extension-backed workflows, and automation that lives outside the app.

The main rule

Use the supported host and API surfaces instead of reaching into storage directly.

That matters because Cove’s real value is not only the data model. It is also the behavior around permissions, provenance, jobs, and host-aware UI.

Practical integration principles

• keep long-running work in jobs or services instead of request handlers
• respect user, role, permission, and content-rule boundaries
• preserve provenance when automations change user-visible metadata
• pair user-configurable API behavior with an understandable UI surface when possible

Data ownership

Extensions can own data, but that ownership should still be understandable:

• administrators should know what the extension stores
• administrators should know which permissions control it
• users should be able to tell when that data affects the library

Use this page with the extension guides

This page is the conceptual boundary. Use it together with:

• Run Cove locally
• Create an extension
• Create a scraper
• Create a downloader