Ask HN: Recommended technographic API?

Does anyone know of any good technographic APIs? I run a dev consultancy and basically want to know what tech stack they currently use (ie what they use for CI/CD or security), so it can help me prepare when i talk to a prospect. I know Builtwith is the leader in this space but i feel its lacking a bit when it comes to finding tech that isnt front end or JS focused.

I’ve tried using the Anthropic API but most of the time it seems to give me hallucinated results (based on the results for companies I know their tech stack)

Ideally something that doesnt cost an arm and an leg :)

4 points | by Poomba 15 days ago

3 comments

  • Kurapica 11 days ago
    Why doesn’t Claude work for this? Especially if you pass the HTML/JS scripts.

    If you want an API, options include Bloomberry and Wappalyzer.

  • is_true 15 days ago
    Just give the page to chatgpt and ask what they use. Give them as much info as you can.
    • Poomba 15 days ago
      I have tried that but 1) it hallucinated a lot of technologies as I mentioned and 2) it only detects the front end stuff not backend
      • AznHisoka 15 days ago
        See the reply up above. You can't just expect LLMs to give you good answers if you're not providing lots of context to it. Also, make sure you give it guardrails. Like say you can't only infer it from the JS scripts on their website, external AJAX calls, job postings posted directly on their website, their Github profile, and engineering blog... Otherwise you're gonna get lots of made up stuff :)
      • is_true 15 days ago
        Besides the context, ask it to specify how it knows a given tech is being used.

        I just realized this whole thread is an ad. haha. GFY

  • AznHisoka 15 days ago
    [flagged]
    • AznHisoka 15 days ago
      Also, in terms of hallucinations, you might want to consider giving more context to it. So instead of just telling the LLM the domain/company only, scrape their website, get all the javascript and XHR calls it makes, and find any job postings, then pass ALL of that to the LLM. The more data it has, the more it can extract. If you just give it a company website, it's just going to make stuff up. That's my 2 cents if you insist on going the LLM route. Or just tell it to scrape more stuff (which will cost more tho)
    • Poomba 15 days ago
      [dead]