Housecall Pro customer portal via curl (no MCP)

This reads the customer side of Housecall Pro: the estimate or invoice a contractor emails or texts you. It is not the Housecall Pro public API — that one serves the business running on Housecall Pro and needs an API key from their account.

No browser bridge is needed. app.housecallpro.com is not bot-walled; a plain curl gets a 200. Do not reach for fpx here.

The one thing to know first

There is no account and no standing link: Housecall Pro sends a separate, disposable link per document, so you work from whichever link you were sent.

Your link is a bearer credential. Anyone holding it can read the estimate and decline it. Keep it in a variable or a file you control, never in a command you paste into a shared transcript, and never commit it.

Setup

Two forms of link exist, and estimates and invoices use different token shapes: an estimate token is 129 characters (two 64-char hex halves joined by _), an invoice token is a bare 32-char hex string. The short link redirects to whichever applies:

# What your contractor sent (short form)
SHORT='https://pro.housecallpro.com/mobile_estimate/XXXXXXXXXX'   # or /mobile_invoice/…

# Resolve it to the retrieval token (an estimate's is 129 chars, an invoice's 32)
HCP_TOKEN=$(curl -sI "$SHORT" | tr -d '\r' | awk 'tolower($1)=="location:"{print $2}' | sed 's#.*/##')

# If you already have a client.housecallpro.com/estimates/… or /invoices/… link, just:
# HCP_TOKEN='<the last path segment>'

echo "${#HCP_TOKEN}"   # 129 for an estimate, 32 for an invoice

Read the estimate

curl -s -H 'Accept: application/json' \
  "https://app.housecallpro.com/alpha/customer_estimates/$HCP_TOKEN" > estimate.json

No Authorization header — reads carry the token in the path.

Money is integer cents. total_amount: 34639 means $346.39. Divide by 100 before reporting anything. tax.rate is the exception: it is a fraction (0.0825 = 8.25%) and must not be scaled.

A one-line summary:

jq -r '
  "\(.company_name) — estimate #\(.estimate.data.estimate_number)",
  "For: \(.customer_name) at \(.estimate.data.address.data.printable_address)",
  (.options.data[] |
    "  \(.name) [\(.status)] $\(.total_amount/100)"),
  (.options.data[].line_items.data[] |
    "    \(.quantity) x \(.name) @ $\(.unit_price/100) = $\(.amount/100)")
' estimate.json

More recipes, including the company lookup and the full field map, are in references/recipes.md.

Is it still awaiting me?

jq -r '.options.data[] | select(.approval_date == null and .status != "Declined")
       | "OPEN: \(.name) $\(.total_amount/100)"' estimate.json

Declining an option

Declining works from a shell. It is the only mutation that does — and it tells the contractor you are not proceeding, so read the estimate first.

OPTION_ID=$(jq -r '.options.data[0].id' estimate.json)   # est_…

curl -s -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Token $HCP_TOKEN" \
  --data-urlencode "estimate_option_uuids[]=$OPTION_ID" \
  https://app.housecallpro.com/api/estimates/estimate_options/customer_declines

Note the asymmetry: writes put the token in the Authorization header, reads put it in the path.

A 2xx is not proof. Re-read and check the option actually moved:

curl -s "https://app.housecallpro.com/alpha/customer_estimates/$HCP_TOKEN" \
  | jq -r '.options.data[] | "\(.id) \(.status) approval_date=\(.approval_date)"'

Approving cannot be scripted

POST /api/estimates/estimate_options/customer_approvals requires a response_token — a reCAPTCHA v3 token minted in-page for the action estimates_customer_approvals. No shell client can produce one, and neither can the fetchproxy bridge (it issues fetch calls; it does not run page JS).

Open the link in a browser and press Approve there. Do not try to work around this: approving is a binding commitment to a quoted price.

Failure modes

Invoices

curl -s -H 'Accept: application/json' \
  "https://app.housecallpro.com/api/invoices/consumer/v1/invoices/$HCP_TOKEN" > invoice.json

The v1 segment is required. /api/invoices/consumer/invoices/<token> — the same path without it — returns 404, as do the /api/v2/consumer/invoices/… and /api/v2/consumer/sent_invoices/… paths that also appear in the app's JavaScript. Only this one answers.

jq -r '"\(.company_info.name) — invoice #\(.invoice_number) [\(.status)]",
       "  subtotal $\(.subtotal/100)",
       "  tax      $\((.total - .subtotal)/100)",
       "  total    $\(.total/100)",
       "  due      $\(.due_amount/100)"' invoice.json

Two things to know: the invoice document has no line items (a paid invoice renders as a summary in the portal, and the API returns exactly that), and no tax field — the tax figure is total - subtotal. Money is integer cents here too. Use due_amount rather than status to decide whether it is settled.