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Documentation

Services

services.categories

List the categories the shop's services are grouped under
Read-onlyRead budget

REST

Shipping
POST /api/v1/services/categories

MCP tool

Live
services.categories

Exposed on: REST API · Shop MCP server · Claude connector · Dash (in-app copilot) · Zapier. Part of the Services domain.

Operating contract

The shop's own menu structure, in the order it renders — on the dashboard, on the booking page and on a quote. Each row carries how many live services sit in it.

name is what services.list's category filter takes and what services.create writes. Pass a name that does not exist to services.create and the category is created; that is deliberate, but it means a typo becomes a new empty section of the shop's menu. Read this list first.

An inactive category still holds its services and is returned, because a shop that hid a section has not stopped selling what is in it.

This returns every category and does not page, so nothing is truncated.

Who may call it

Permission
shop.manageThe caller must hold shop.manage at the ACT level. A read-only dashboard grant on the same section is refused.
Plan
Every planNo plan gate. Available on every Service VIN plan.
Retries
naturalNaturally idempotent — running it twice leaves the same world as running it once. A retrying integration needs no key.
Rate class
readCounted against the read budget — the widest of the four.

Input

This capability takes no arguments.

Output

FieldTypeDescription
itemsobject[]

items[].idstring

items[].namestring

items[].keystring

items[].activeboolean

items[].sort_ordernumber

items[].service_countnumber

Examples

Built from this capability's own schema — required fields and the ones carrying a default, and nothing invented. Paste one and it validates.

curl
export SERVICEVIN_API_KEY=svk_live_…

curl -X POST https://www.servicevin.com/api/v1/services/categories \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SERVICEVIN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{}'

TypeScript (fetch)
const res = await fetch("https://www.servicevin.com/api/v1/services/categories", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.SERVICEVIN_API_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({}),
});

// Success and failure are both envelopes. Switch on error.code, never
// on error.message — the codes are stable, the messages are for people.
const payload = await res.json();
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(payload.error.code);
const data = payload.data;

Python (requests)
import os, requests

res = requests.post(
    "https://www.servicevin.com/api/v1/services/categories",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SERVICEVIN_API_KEY']}"},
    json={},
    timeout=30,
)
payload = res.json()
if not res.ok:
    raise RuntimeError(payload["error"]["code"])
data = payload["data"]

MCP tools/call — https://www.servicevin.com/api/mcp
{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "services.categories",
    "arguments": {}
  }
}

Refusals

The four gates run in this order on every surface, and the order is not arbitrary — see Authentication.

StatusCodeWhen
404not_foundThe id is unknown, or the feature is not enabled for this account. Deliberately the same answer for both.
403forbiddenThis login does not hold shop.manage.
422validation_errorAn argument was wrong. The message names the field.
429rate_limitedToo many read calls. Back off and retry.
500internal_errorSomething failed on our side. Nothing was changed.