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

> Keep your app's users and your PixelGlass members in step over the admin's JSON: find by address, add, change, label, and change many at once.

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

## 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


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.

## Examples

- **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

### 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.

## See also

- [Make a staff key](https://pixelglass.co/guides/make-a-staff-key): A staff key acts as you, inside your role, on the admin's JSON and the MCP server. Make one, copy it once, remove it to close it.
- [Read your notifications from code](https://pixelglass.co/guides/read-your-notifications-from-code): New members, comments, paid plans, sends and agents' posts, as JSON with a staff key. Every event of the audit log too, for owners and admins.
- [Manage your member list](https://pixelglass.co/guides/manage-your-member-list): Find any reader by name or address, filter by status, plan, newsletter and label, add a person by hand, and change many members at once.
- [Developer API](https://pixelglass.co/features/developers): Read your site as JSON, sync members from your app, sign readers in with your own accounts, and run it all from an agent. Webhooks are coming soon.
- [Members and comments](https://pixelglass.co/features/community): Give readers a member account with no password, a conversation under every post, and badges that honour your supporters. Moderated by your team.
- [Every guide](https://pixelglass.co/guides)
- [Pricing](https://pixelglass.co/pricing): every feature on every plan, 14 days free
- [Create your site](https://pixelglass.co/signup)