I've hit this wall more times than I can count. I need to post to a creator account, verify an SMS code on a virtual phone, or stitch a mobile workflow into a backend pipeline. Then I go looking for the API and find one of three things: there isn't one, there is one but it's locked behind a partnership form, or there is one but it's missing the exact thing I need :(
For a long time, the answer was "tough luck, scrape the UI." I think that answer is finally changing, because I think now the AI agents have gotten good enough to drive a phone the same way I would. This post is about how that actually works in practice.
Why so many apps don't have APIs
Let's talk about why this gap exists. Most consumer apps—banking, social, messaging, dating don't ship public APIs because their business model wants you to use the app not the web.
APIs introduce things they don't want like scraping, abuse, churn from third-party clients, and it creates regulatory headaches. Even when an API exists (eg. Instagram Graph, WhatsApp Business, the various fintech sandboxes), it's almost always a narrow slice of what the app itself can do.
