Yeah Hardcover seems to have a GraphQL API they use for their UI, which they expose. There’s not a lot of extra polish for third party devs — it feels like “this is the API we use, use it or not, things may break”. On the other hand, StoryGraph does server-side rendering and so it doesn’t have an API already. So adding one would be a decent amount of work
To be clear, Hardcover also does server-side rendering.
GR ditching their API was one of the primary motivations for Adam Fortuna (Hardcover's founder and Lead Dev) to even think about trying to create a competitor, so when he did create one, having an API available to others was a primary focus.
Note: Hardcover is also working towards open sourcing at some level, hopefully in 2025.
