Substack publication and Notes research

Access and contract

Set CRAWLORA_API_KEY to your Crawlora key. Prefer the named Crawlora MCP tools when connected; otherwise use the bundled scripts/crawlora.sh, which sends x-api-key to https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1. Read reference/endpoints.md for exact tool names, methods, and parameters. Check application code as well as HTTP status; payloads are inside data. Stop on authentication errors, back off on 429, and retry a transient upstream failure once. Bound pages and calls by the requested scope and credit budget. Preserve source URLs, identifiers, and collection times.

Find public newsletters and writers, then inspect bounded samples of their published work and discussion. Use publication identity separately from writer identity; one writer may contribute to multiple publications.

Discover and follow returned identities

• Search publications or users with their respective tools. Publication detail requires either publication (subdomain/custom domain) or publication_id; supply one despite the schema marking both individually optional. Posts use a publication identifier plus a returned post slug, not a user handle alone.
• Discover categories before category browsing or leaderboards. Category IDs can be numeric or podcast; keep free/paid leaderboard scope explicit. Category pages are zero-based, while publication archives use offset and limit.
• Fetch publication posts, selected public post content, contributors, and recommendations only as relevant. Recommendations require the numeric publication ID; a recommendation or user connection does not establish a commercial relationship, endorsement of every article, or common ownership.
• Notes tabs return a paired tab ID and type (base, secondary, category). Preserve the pair. Follow next_cursor for Notes, replies, or restacks; small variable pages do not imply pagination has ended.
• User detail/activity/connections and Notes/replies/restacks use their own returned identifiers. Preserve which surface produced each engagement metric.

scripts/crawlora.sh /substack/search query="climate policy"
scripts/crawlora.sh /substack/categories
scripts/crawlora.sh /substack/notes/tabs
# Use a discovered publication and post slug, for example:
# scripts/crawlora.sh /substack/publication publication="$PUBLICATION"
# scripts/crawlora.sh /substack/publication/posts publication="$PUBLICATION" sort=new limit=10
# scripts/crawlora.sh /substack/post publication="$PUBLICATION" slug="$POST_SLUG"

Interpret and deliver

Return a publication/writer shortlist or coverage brief with topic-fit evidence, public excerpts, URLs, dates, collection time, and sample size. Distinguish a paid-content preview from the full article and leave unavailable text unknown. A public feed is a snapshot, not the signed-in user's personalised feed. Leaderboard positions, follower counts, or reactions are not audited subscriber revenue or representative opinion. Attribute claims to their authors and separate coverage observations from inference. Do not subscribe, comment, message writers, or follow accounts unless the user requests those actions.