Developers

Your app's users.
Your site's readers.

Your app already knows who your readers are. With a staff key, its code finds each reader by address and keeps them in step: their name, their labels, their newsletters, without a person in the loop.

Early accessThis guide uses a feature in early access. PixelGlass turns it on for a publication on request while it is new.

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Say it to your agent

Write a nightly job that labels our paying users Customer on our PixelGlass site.

Two ways to do it.

By hand

In the admin

  1. As an admin, open Settings › API. Under Your keys, press New key and copy it: it is shown once.
  2. Find a reader by address: ask /pixel/members.json with the email. One member comes back, or none.
  3. Add a reader who is not there with a POST to /pixel/members.json. This door opens when PixelGlass turns it on for your site: ask on Audience › Import.
  4. Change a member's name, address or labels with a PATCH to the member. Join or leave a newsletter through their subscriptions.
  5. Change many members at once with /pixel/members/batch.json: subscribe, unsubscribe, add a label or remove one.

With your agent

In Claude, ChatGPT or your editor

No tool on the MCP server reads or changes the member list. A coding agent such as Claude Code can write the sync against the admin's JSON, and your app runs it with your staff key.

For example

  • Customers, labelled each night

    A design tool's nightly job adds the Customer label to every paying user. The newsletter team filters by it for the product updates.

  • A new account, a new reader

    A coding school adds each new student as a member the day they enrol, on the Course news newsletter.

  • An address that changed

    A user changes their email in a booking app. The app finds the member by the old address and sends the new one.

Questions, answered

How do I sync members from my app to PixelGlass?
Make a staff key as an admin, then use the admin's JSON: find a member by address, add one who is missing, change names, addresses and labels, and change many members at once with the batch.
How does my app find a member without PixelGlass ids?
Ask /pixel/members.json with the email address. The answer holds that one member, or none.
What happens when the address is already a member?
Adding it, or changing another member to it, answers 409. A bad field answers 422, so your code tells the two apart without reading the sentence.
Does adding a member through the API send an email?
No. A member added this way is confirmed and gets no email. It joins the newsletters you name, or the lists that take new sign-ups.
How do labels work through the API?
The labels you send replace the member's labels. To add one, send the ones they wear with it, or use add_label in the batch.
Who may a staff key change members as?
As the person who made it. An editor's key reads the list. An admin's or the owner's key adds, changes and deletes members.

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