[makeitdouble]

This was the Rabbit R1's connundrum. Uber/DoorDash/Spotify have APIs for external integration, but they require business deals and negociations.

So how to evade talking to the service's business people ? Provide a chain of Rube Goldberg machines to somewhat use these services as if it was the user. It can then be touted as flexibility, and blame the state of technology when it inevitably breaks, if it even worked in the first place.

[digitaltrees]

This is definitely true but there are more reasons that explain why so many teams choose the seemingly irrational path. First, so many APIs are designed differently, so even if you decide the business negotiation is worth it you have development work ahead. Second, tons of vendors don’t even have an API. So the thought of building a tool once is appealing

[makeitdouble]

Those are of course valid points. The counterpart being that a vendor might not have an API because they actively don't want to (Twitter/X for instance...), and when they have one, clients trying to circumvent their system to basically scrape the user UX won't be welcomed either.

So most of the time that path of "build a tool once" will be adversarial towards the service, which will be incentivized to actively kill your ad-hoc integration if they can without too much collateral damage.