Twitch API summer 2018 roadmap update

The new Twitch API has been around for about ten months now. Since the initial launch, we have added thirteen new endpoints and four webhooks, as documented in the API reference. Several types of developers build on the API including indie game developers, large studios, hobbyists, streamer tools developers, and enterprise developers. With such a variety of developers, we also recognize a wide variety of priorities.

When we consider new functionality and support for new use cases, we apply our API core tenets to all potential API features — simplicity, consistency, reliability, and transparency as defined during the launch. Enforcing these principles correctly is a delicate exercise and sometimes takes longer than expected. As such, we ask that you to bear with us if it appears at times that our updates are not moving faster than preferred.

For simplicity and consistency, we make sure that each API data model, security, and pagination mechanism matches the rest of the API. We are also adding simple subscription management APIs to Websub, which will give more insights and flexibility to webhooks consumers.

For reliability (and security) while traffic is ever-increasing for Twitch, we are constantly tuning our API and webhooks stack, and regularly re-architect different parts of our systems to make them more fault tolerant.

For the sake of transparency, we are due for updates this summer on our API roadmap. Here are a few endpoints and webhooks we will work on in the next two quarters or so:

Websub subscription management APIs
Programmatically see which webhook subscriptions are currently active

Emotes
Get whitelisted emotes as well as emotes from different partners

Drops campaign management
Programmatically manage your campaigns and items

Chatters
See which viewers are chatting in a room

Extensions Analytics
Analyze report data for your extensions based on time ranges and report types

Mod Author analytics
Get reports on your CurseForge projects

Chat blocks
Programmatically manage authed users’ blocked list

Chat mods
Moderation management

Subscriptions
Access subscription information of authed users (i.e. get subs of a user)

For the longer-term feature list, we want to hear from you as always. Let us know which important use cases are not currently officially supported by the new Twitch API through the new API feature request form so that we can prioritize accordingly. If you ever feel that an endpoint, webhook, or feature you’ve been expecting is not on our radar, please let us know. This form enables us to gather your feedback in a standardized and centralized way, which means that all developer voices will be recorded, sorted, and triaged in a single, consistent repository.

Additionally, for APIs related to Extensions, we are using the RFC process outlined in this blog post for feedback before product releases. Other APIs may adopt this process in the future.

Thank you for being a part of the Twitch developer community. Please make sure to provide additional commentary about the API on the forums, follow the developer product roadmap on Trello, sign up for developer news, and follow @TwitchDev on Twitter.

Ready to start building with the Twitch API? Learn more now!