vehicles.decode_vin

Decode a VIN into the vehicle's year, make, model and size

Read-onlyWrite budget

REST

Shipping

POST /api/v1/vehicles/decode_vin

MCP tool

Live

vehicles.decode_vin

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

Operating contract

Turns seventeen characters into a car: year, make, model, trim and body class, plus the vehicle SIZE this product prices on.

USE THIS BEFORE vehicles.create, not after. A VIN typed off a windscreen is the most reliable thing a customer can give you, and a decoded record beats four questions and a guess about whether an F-150 is a truck.

vehicle_type IS THE FIGURE THAT MOVES MONEY. It is what booking.availability, booking.deposit_due and every price tier are read at, and it is derived from the body class rather than from the model name — which is why a VIN beats asking.

THIS DOES NOT TOUCH THIS SHOP'S RECORDS. It decodes; it files nothing. vehicles.find_by_vin is the read that says whether this shop already has the car, and it is worth making first — decoding a VIN the shop already holds and creating a second record is how a customer's history splits in two.

decoded: false MEANS THE LOOKUP DID NOT ANSWER, and that is not the same as a bad VIN. The upstream register can be slow, down, or simply hold nothing for an import or a very new model. Keep the raw VIN and ask the customer rather than reporting the car does not exist.

TRIM IS NOT TITLE-CASED, deliberately — trims are usually initialisms (XLT, SE, GT) and title-casing turns them into nonsense. Quote it as returned.

One VIN, entirely returned, so nothing is truncated.

Who may call it

Permission: customers.accessThe caller must hold Customers 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: writeCounted against the write budget, which is tighter than a read.

Input

Field	Type	Description
vinrequired	stringmax 17 chars, min 11 chars	The vehicle's VIN, as read off the car or given by the customer. Case and spacing do not matter.

Output

Field	Type	Description
vin	string	—
decoded	boolean	—
year	number \| null	—
make	string \| null	—
model	string \| null	—
trim	string \| null	—
body_class	string \| null	—
vehicle_type	string \| null	—

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/vehicles/decode_vin \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SERVICEVIN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"vin":"…"}'

TypeScript (fetch)

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

// 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/vehicles/decode_vin",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SERVICEVIN_API_KEY']}"},
    json={
    "vin": "…"
},
    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": "vehicles.decode_vin",
    "arguments": {
      "vin": "…"
    }
  }
}

Refusals

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

Status	Code	When
404	`not_found`	The id is unknown, or the feature is not enabled for this account. Deliberately the same answer for both.
403	`forbidden`	This login does not hold customers.access.
422	`validation_error`	An argument was wrong. The message names the field.
429	`rate_limited`	Too many write calls. Back off and retry.
500	`internal_error`	Something failed on our side. Nothing was changed.

Operating contract#

Who may call it#

Input#

Output#

Examples#