One of the advantages that RunSignup customers have as we move into the AI Era is how open we are with our content and our API. Users of ChatGPT know they can ask all types of RunSignup questions like “How do I assign bibs in RunSignup?”. Our API is also open and enables customers to use the new generation of AI based tools to create applications very, very quickly.
We are particularly enthusiastic about the new model of writing code by promoting a development tool model rather than writing the code. We think this opens up the data and all of the rules and logic and application held in RunSignup to a wider audience of people. There is a new generation of companies that are building not only tools, but also making it simple to deploy those applications. Examples are Vercel (and especially their new v0.dev offering) and Replit. These are not the tools that we use to produce our system, but they are more accessible to the broader market.
This means that customers do not need to be advanced software developers to access their data and create their own applications. For example, RunSignup uses our own API for all of our RaceDay Tools like RaceDay CheckIn, RaceDay Scoring and RaceDay Mobile Timing. Here is a list of all of the API’s we offer.
Race List Built with v0.dev and the RunSignup Open API
To demonstrate what can be done today, we played with V0.dev for only an hour to use the Get Races API. In a set of conversations with V0.dev, we developed and made available publicly (you can also share privately) this application – Race List Application.
v0.dev dashboard for this project is displayed below. Do not let it intimidate you with the code portion. The chat area is where you do the work and then you can deploy the application. You can see we are on Version 10 – basically the number of iterations of our chat session to make it work and refine it.
Here are the basic prompts that we used:
- I want to build a web application that shows the list of races from RunSignup. Use https://runsignup.com/API/races/GET to get a list of races
- It does not seem to work. Whats the problem?
- Here is a sample reqyest that i know works. maybe this will help format your request better – https://runsignup.com/Rest/races?api_key=ZZZZZ&api_secret=ZZZZ&format=json&events=F&race_headings=F&race_links=F&include_waiver=F&include_multiple_waivers=F&include_event_days=F&include_extra_date_info=F&page=1&results_per_page=50&sort=name+ASC&start_date=today&only_partner_races=F&search_start_date_only=F&only_races_with_results=F&distance_units=K (Note – we hid the API Secret and Key)
- Can you fill in the data in the UI based on the returned information with things like a link to the runsignup race website and the location and date?
- it is still not showing any real data
- This is what v0 said: “I see the issue now. The API is returning data correctly, but we need to adjust how we’re handling the response structure in our components. Let me update the code to properly display the race information:”
- It was still having trouble, so we used the “Try It” feature on our API page and copy and pasted the output back to V0.
- That is great! Can you do two things? First order them by the data of the race with upcoming races first by date? Also, can you now create a search for races based on zipcode and also date?
- the calendar picker does not seem to work.
- how do i share this so anyone can see? it still has a popup about the secret and key
That was it!
RunSignup Plans for AI use of our API
This was a pretty simple example that uses a public API that many race listing services use already like RunningintheUSA.com and HalfMarathons.net and FindaRace.com. However, it can be used with a Partner or race API Keys (under the Secure Access menu item on the RunSignup dashboard) with specific information about a race.
We know this can be very powerful for customers to develop their own dashboards or timers to create new ways of showing result data or nonprofits showing donor information in creative ways. It extends the power of RunSignup to everyone and beyond what we have the time to build for our customers.
We intend to take a number of steps to make this even better:
- More examples and more documentation.
- Putting an OpenAPI wrapper on our API which will make it easier for AI tools to understand our API so there are fewer mistakes.
- Implementing an improved OAuth V2 so that AI application developers can build secure applications.
- Continue to build out API features that are useful to our customers.
- Integrations with tools like Replit to have “plug-ins”.
- Facilitating success stories of leveraging AI – for example using AI for a customer service chatbot. (which is a great example of combining all the knowledge the Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Claude have about RunSignup because of our extensive documentation).
We are excited about the future of AI for the event community and will be AI leaders with our open approach.