Ohio State Api

What This Skill Does

The Ohio State API skill provides a comprehensive interface for accessing public data from The Ohio State University’s Content API (content.osu.edu). It serves as a unified gateway for developers and researchers to interact with a vast array of campus services, including bus schedules, building information, dining options, academic calendars, event listings, athletic data, and parking availability. By leveraging this skill, you can automate the retrieval of structured JSON data for campus features, making it significantly easier to build applications, dashboards, or diagnostic tools that rely on real-time OSU information without manually parsing complex API endpoints.

Installation

To integrate this skill into your environment, use the OpenClaw CLI command: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/sichengchen/ohio-state-api. The skill requires outbound internet access to reach the OSU Content API servers. For advanced users, an optional MCP (Model Context Protocol) server is bundled within the package. To enable the MCP server, navigate to ohio-state-api/mcp-server/, execute npm install followed by npm run build, and configure your MCP-compatible client to execute the resulting index.js file using node.

Use Cases

• Campus Navigation: Fetch detailed building locations and real-time parking availability to assist students and staff in navigating campus.
• Dining Planning: Retrieve current dining hall menus, operating hours, and food truck locations to help users plan their meals efficiently.
• Event Discovery: Aggregate upcoming campus events, academic calendar dates, and athletic schedules to keep the community informed.
• Data Analysis: Extract, inspect, and process large datasets from OSU services to perform trend analysis on transit patterns or service usage.

Example Prompts

1. "Check the current dining hall menu for the Ohio Union and let me know if they have any vegetarian options available today."
2. "Find the nearest parking garages to the RPAC and list their current occupancy status if available."
3. "List all bus routes currently active on campus and tell me the estimated arrival time for the next bus at the Curl Hall stop."

Tips & Limitations

• Efficiency: Always start by identifying the specific service area. Use the list and search endpoints first to narrow down targets before requesting specific detail-level JSON.
• Data Integrity: When working with time-based data (events or bus schedules), ensure you include both the absolute query window and the current retrieval timestamp to prevent using stale information.
• Formatting: If you are fetching data manually, leverage the --extract flag or pipe output to jq for readable JSON structures.
• Dependency: This skill is strictly read-only for public endpoints. It cannot modify OSU data and relies entirely on the availability and stability of the content.osu.edu service.