search

Discover APIs

Answer natural language questions about available APIs across Postman workspaces. Find endpoints, check response shapes, and understand what's available.

Prerequisites

The Postman MCP Server must be connected. If MCP tools aren't available, tell the user: "Run /postman:setup to configure the Postman MCP Server."

Workflow

Step 1: Search

Use the unified searchPostmanElements tool. It can search across various entity types like requests, collections, workspaces, specs, flows, environments and mocks. Choose entityType, ownership, and filters based on the user's intent.

1. Call searchPostmanElements with the user's query. Pick the parameters from the user's intent:
   • entityType: requests (default), collections, workspaces, specs, or flows.
   • ownership: organization (default — your org's resources), external (public Postman network, third-party APIs), or all (both).
   • filters: Optional structured $and expression to narrow results — e.g., restrict to the Private API Network, a workspace, or HTTP method.
2. If results are sparse, broaden the search — widen ownership to all, drop or relax filters, or try a different entityType. You can also fall back to getWorkspaces + getCollections for browsing, or getTaggedEntities to find collections by tag.

Filter examples:

• Search only the trusted Private API Network: ownership: organization with filters: {"$and":[{"privateNetwork":{"$eq":true}}]}
• Find a third-party public API (e.g. "Stripe API"): ownership: external with filters: {"$and":[{"visibility":{"$eq":"public"}}]}
• Restrict to a specific workspace: filters: {"$and":[{"workspaceId":{"$eq":"ws-abc123"}}]}
• GET requests only: entityType: requests with filters: {"$and":[{"method":{"$eq":"GET"}}]}

Step 2: Drill Into Results

For each relevant hit:

1. Call getCollection to get the overview
2. Scan endpoint names and descriptions for relevance
3. Call getCollectionRequest for the most relevant endpoints
4. Call getCollectionResponse to show what data is available
5. Call getSpecDefinition if a linked spec exists for richer detail