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yelp

Quick start

Run your first searches and reads with yelp.

Once yelp is on your PATH, resolve a reference offline (this always works, from any network):

yelp ref id "https://www.yelp.com/biz/garaje-san-francisco" -o json

[
  {
    "input": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/garaje-san-francisco",
    "kind": "biz",
    "id": "garaje-san-francisco",
    "url": "https://www.yelp.com/biz/garaje-san-francisco"
  }
]

Read live data

The live reads work best-effort on the web plane (a home or mobile network usually answers; a datacenter hits the bot wall and exits 4) and reliably on the fusion plane:

yelp search "tacos" "San Francisco, CA"     # business search by term and place
yelp biz garaje-san-francisco               # one business by alias
yelp reviews garaje-san-francisco           # a business's reviews
yelp suggest "coffee"                       # autocomplete a prefix
yelp user <user-id>                         # a reviewer's public profile

A business is addressed by its alias, like garaje-san-francisco, or a /biz/ URL. Scope a search to a place with the trailing location argument or --location, and order it with --sort and --price:

yelp search "ramen" --location "Oakland, CA" --sort rating --price 1,2 -n 10

Use the Fusion API for reliable reads

The web plane is best-effort behind the bot wall. For reads that answer from any network, including a datacenter or CI, get a free Yelp developer key and set it in the environment:

export YELP_API_KEY=...                      # free at the Yelp developer portal
yelp biz garaje-san-francisco                # now reads the Fusion API
yelp categories                              # the category taxonomy (fusion only)

yelp uses the fusion plane automatically when the key is set. Force a plane with --plane web|fusion|auto. The key is read from the environment only, never a flag.

Shape the output

The same flags work on every command:

yelp search "tacos" "San Francisco, CA" --fields name,rating,review_count,price
yelp biz garaje-san-francisco --template '{{.Name}} ({{.Rating}})'
yelp search "tacos" "San Francisco, CA" -o jsonl | jq .alias

-o takes table, json, jsonl, csv, tsv, url, or raw. Left to auto, it prints a table to a terminal and JSONL into a pipe, so the same command reads well by hand and parses cleanly downstream. See output formats for the full contract.

Serve it instead

The same operations are available over HTTP and to agents over MCP:

yelp serve --addr :7777 &
curl -s 'localhost:7777/v1/biz/garaje-san-francisco'   # NDJSON, one record per line
yelp mcp                                                # MCP over stdio

Where to go next

  • The guides cover the common jobs, including using yelp as a resource-URI driver for a crawling host.
  • The CLI reference is the full command and flag surface.
  • Troubleshooting explains the exit codes and the bot wall.
3 min read