iFixit Search Repair Guides

Purpose

Search iFixit for repair guides matching a device model, brand, or category (phone, laptop, desktop, printer, etc.) and return a structured list of guides with title, difficulty level, time required, step count, required tools, replacement parts, and direct guide URL. For any individual guide, return the full step-by-step instructions including step titles, bullet text, and per-step image URLs at multiple resolutions. Supports filtering by device type, brand, and difficulty. Read-only — never edits guides, never posts comments, never adds items to cart, never reaches checkout.

When to Use

• "Find iPhone 14 battery replacement guides and return tools + steps."
• "List all laptop screen repair guides for Dell Latitude with difficulty Easy or Moderate."
• "Get the full step-by-step (with image URLs) for guide #152966."
• Enumerating repairability data for a device family for a downstream agent (product research, parts shopping, repairability scoring).
• Bulk extraction of repair-procedure metadata across hundreds of devices — the API is faster, cheaper, and structurally more reliable than HTML scraping.

Workflow

iFixit exposes a fully public REST API at https://www.ifixit.com/api/2.0/ — no authentication, no API key, no cookies, no anti-bot stealth, no residential proxy needed. The site's web search page is a thin client over the same API. Always lead with the API; the browser path exists only as a backstop if the API is ever rate-limited or temporarily unreachable (no evidence either has happened in normal use).

1. Search for guides

GET https://www.ifixit.com/api/2.0/search/{URL-encoded query}
    ?filter=guide
    &limit={1-100}
    &offset={N}

• {query} is free text: device model (iPhone 14), brand + model (Dell Latitude 7420), part + device (MacBook Pro keyboard), or category (PC Laptop battery). URL-encode spaces as %20 or +.
• filter=guide is mandatory if you only want repair guides. Without it, the search mixes dataType: "guide", "wiki" (device taxonomy pages), "question" (community Q&A), and "page" (static content). Typical unfiltered mix observed: ~30% guides, ~50% wikis, ~15% questions, ~5% pages.
• limit defaults to 100; max practical value is 100. offset pages through additional results when moreResults: true is set on the response.

Response shape — each result already contains everything the listing-card UI needs:

{
  "search": "iphone 14 battery",
  "offset": 0,
  "limit": 5,
  "totalResults": 4,
  "moreResults": false,
  "results": [
    {
      "dataType": "guide",
      "guideid": 152966,
      "title": "iPhone 14 Battery Replacement",
      "subject": "Battery",
      "category": "iPhone 14",
      "type": "replacement",
      "difficulty": "Moderate",
      "time_required_max": 7200,
      "summary": "Use this guide to replace a worn-out or dead…",
      "url": "https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+14+Battery+Replacement/152966",
      "username": "Tobias Isakeit",
      "flags": ["GUIDE_STARRED"],
      "image": { "thumbnail": "...", "standard": "...", "large": "...", "original": "..." }
    }
  ]
}

Important: this endpoint does NOT return the tools[], parts[], or steps[] arrays — those only come from the per-guide endpoint in step 3. Step count is also absent at search time. If the caller asked for "list of guides matching X" with no step-level detail, you can stop here.

2. Apply client-side filters

The search endpoint has no native filter for device type, brand, or difficulty — fold them in after the response lands:

• Device type filter (phone | laptop | desktop | printer | tablet | mac | game-console | ...): each result's category field is the canonical iFixit device-taxonomy node (e.g. "iPhone 14", "Dell Latitude 7420", "Brother HL-2270DW"). To filter by device type, walk the category against the iFixit category tree at GET /api/2.0/categories — Phone lives under Phone, laptops under PC > PC Laptop or Mac > Mac Laptop, desktops under PC > PC Desktop or Mac > Mac Desktop, and printers under Computer Hardware > Printer. For most use cases a simple substring match on category ("iPhone", "MacBook", "Latitude") is sufficient and avoids the extra request.
• Brand filter: put the brand directly in the search query ("Dell Latitude", "Brother HL", "Samsung Galaxy") — far simpler than post-filtering. Or post-filter on category containing the brand string.
• Difficulty filter: post-filter difficulty in {"Very easy", "Easy", "Moderate", "Difficult", "Very difficult"}. The set is closed-vocabulary.

3. Fetch full guide detail (tools, parts, steps with images)

For each guideid of interest:

GET https://www.ifixit.com/api/2.0/guides/{guideid}

Returns the full guide envelope — fields used by this skill:

Step count is simply steps.length. No top-level step_count field is exposed.

tools[] shape:

{ "text": "SIM Card Eject Tool", "quantity": 1, "isoptional": false, "type": "",
  "url": "https://www.ifixit.com/products/sim-card-eject-tool",
  "thumbnail": "https://cart-products.cdn.ifixit.com/cart-products/OKbwbsAqNCv4lWAP.thumbnail",
  "notes": null }

parts[] shape (same shape as tools — iFixit treats them as cart products):

{ "text": "iPhone 12/12 Pro Battery", "quantity": 1, "isoptional": false, "type": "",
  "url": "https://www.ifixit.com/products/iphone-12-12-pro-replacement-battery",
  "thumbnail": "...", "notes": null }

steps[] shape:

{
  "stepid": 280491,
  "orderby": 1,
  "title": "Eject the SIM card tray",
  "lines": [
    { "text_raw": "Insert a SIM card eject tool …", "text_rendered": "…", "bullet": "black", "level": 0 },
    { "text_raw": "Press firmly to eject the tray.", "text_rendered": "…", "bullet": "black", "level": 0 }
  ],
  "media": {
    "type": "image",
    "data": [
      { "id": 2328713, "guid": "3DrAgS2S2IaCnYj6",
        "thumbnail": "...", "standard": "...", "medium": "...", "large": "...", "huge": "...", "original": "..." }
    ]
  },
  "comments": [...]
}

Each step has up to three images in its media.data[] array (the iFixit UI shows up to three side-by-side per step). media.type can also be "embed" (YouTube/Vimeo intro video) — those steps have data: [] and instead carry an embed_url field; rare.

4. Compose the structured output

Stitch the search result + per-guide detail responses into the final shape (see "Expected Output" below). For "list-only" queries skip step 3 entirely; for "list + step-by-step" queries fetch the per-guide detail for each guideid (parallelizable — the API is happy with concurrent reads, but keep ≤ 5 in-flight requests as a courtesy).

Browser fallback

Only if the public API is unreachable. The HTML pages are stable, server-rendered (no SPA), and contain the same data as the API.

1. Search page — https://www.ifixit.com/Search?query={URL-encoded query}. Each result is an <a> whose href points to /Guide/<slug>/<guideid> and whose adjacent markup includes data-difficulty="...", data-time="...", plus the title text. Use browse get html body then regex-match /Guide/[^/"]+/(\d+) to pull guide IDs.
2. Guide page — https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/<slug>/<guideid>. The page has structured data at script[type="application/ld+json"] containing name, totalTime (ISO 8601 duration), step[] (each with name, text, image), and tool[]. iFixit also embeds a window.__INITIAL_STATE__ JSON blob in <script> with everything the API returns. Extract via browse eval "JSON.stringify(window.__INITIAL_STATE__.guide)".

Cost premium for the browser path is ~10× (one HTTP round-trip per page vs one for the entire structured envelope) and offers no extra data. Use only as a backstop.

Site-Specific Gotchas

• Search returns mixed dataTypes — always pass ?filter=guide. Without the filter, ~70% of results are wikis (device taxonomy nodes), Q&A threads, and static pages — useless for a "repair guides" task. Other filter values exist (wiki, question, page, device, team) but this skill should always pin to guide.
• time_required_min/max are integer seconds, NOT minutes or ISO durations. Sample: 3600 / 7200 = "1 – 2 hours". A pretty-printed time_required string is also available, but use the integer fields for any arithmetic / sorting / comparison.
• parts[] are iFixit store SKUs, not OEM/manufacturer part numbers. The API exposes only iFixit's own commerce product (name, store URL, thumbnail, quantity). The original task description asks for "part numbers" — the closest stable identifier is the URL slug (e.g. iphone-12-12-pro-replacement-battery) or the product's text (display name). Canonical OEM part numbers (e.g. Apple's 661-19586) are not in the API and are not on the rendered guide page either — they live only in iFixit's commerce catalog for some SKUs and are surfaced inconsistently. Be explicit with downstream callers that "part number" = iFixit SKU URL/slug, not manufacturer part number.
• difficulty is a closed vocabulary: Very easy | Easy | Moderate | Difficult | Very difficult. Anything else means the field is null or the guide is malformed.
• Search is fuzzy but tokenizes oddly on hyphenated model numbers. "brother hl-2270dw" → totalResults: 0. Drop the hyphen ("brother hl2270dw" or "brother hl 2270dw") for a chance at matches, or fall back to a broader query ("brother hl printer") and post-filter on category. Stop-words and case are normalized; punctuation is not.
• The /api/2.0/categories/<name>/guides endpoint does NOT exist — it 404s with {"message":"Endpoint not found"}. To enumerate guides for a whole device category, search for the category name itself (e.g. search/iPhone%2014%20Pro?filter=guide&limit=100) and post-filter on the category field. The category tree at /api/2.0/categories is for taxonomy navigation only.
• /api/2.0/wikis/CATEGORY/<Title> returns the device-taxonomy node (description, ancestors, children, related parts/tools) but not the list of guides for that device — guides arrive only through the search endpoint or by enumerating known guideids. Spaces in titles become _ (e.g. MacBook_Pro, not MacBook%20Pro).
• Invalid guideid → HTTP 200 with {"message":"Guide not found"} (NOT a 4xx status). Always check for the message key before assuming the body is a guide envelope.
• Pagination quirks: offset is accepted but for small result sets (≤ limit) the API ignores it and returns the same first page. Trust totalResults and moreResults for paging logic — only request a non-zero offset if moreResults: true was on the prior response.
• Locale: the API defaults to en. Pass &langid=de (or any of available_langids on the guide envelope) to get a translated guide. Search results also vary by locale; for international device names ("iPhone 14" works in any locale, "PC Laptop" only in English) prefer the English query.
• No rate-limiting observed during normal use, but keep concurrency ≤ 5 in-flight requests and overall ≤ 10 req/s to avoid tripping CloudFront's edge throttle. Responses carry Cache-Control: no-store — repeated identical requests are not cached client-side.
• No anti-bot, no Cloudflare/Akamai interstitial, no captcha, no login wall. Sessions created with --proxies or --verified flags are unnecessary cost — bare browse cloud fetch works.
• READ-ONLY discipline: do not POST to any endpoint, do not authenticate with /api/2.0/user/token, do not call /api/2.0/cart/*, and on the browser fallback never click "Add to cart", "Edit this guide", "Add a comment", or "Mark as done" — they all attempt to mutate state or open a paywall.

Expected Output

The skill returns one of these JSON shapes:

// Success — list of guides matching the search (no step-by-step requested)
{
  "success": true,
  "query": "iPhone 14 battery",
  "filters": { "device_type": "phone", "brand": "Apple", "difficulty": ["Easy", "Moderate"] },
  "total_results": 4,
  "more_results": false,
  "guides": [
    {
      "guide_id": 152966,
      "title": "iPhone 14 Battery Replacement",
      "url": "https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+14+Battery+Replacement/152966",
      "category": "iPhone 14",
      "subject": "Battery",
      "type": "replacement",
      "difficulty": "Moderate",
      "time_required": "1 - 2 hours",
      "time_required_seconds": { "min": 3600, "max": 7200 },
      "summary": "Use this guide to replace a worn-out or dead…",
      "hero_image_url": "https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/2qpgDse6XOHTCuJY.large",
      "author": "Tobias Isakeit",
      "flags": ["GUIDE_STARRED"]
    }
  ]
}

// Success — single guide with full step-by-step + tools + parts
{
  "success": true,
  "guide": {
    "guide_id": 152966,
    "title": "iPhone 14 Battery Replacement",
    "url": "https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+14+Battery+Replacement/152966",
    "category": "iPhone 14",
    "subject": "Battery",
    "type": "replacement",
    "difficulty": "Moderate",
    "time_required": "1 - 2 hours",
    "time_required_seconds": { "min": 3600, "max": 7200 },
    "step_count": 49,
    "introduction": "iPhone batteries are rated to hold 80% of their capacity for up to 500 charge cycles…",
    "tools": [
      {
        "name": "SIM Card Eject Tool",
        "quantity": 1,
        "optional": false,
        "ifixit_product_url": "https://www.ifixit.com/products/sim-card-eject-tool",
        "thumbnail": "https://cart-products.cdn.ifixit.com/cart-products/OKbwbsAqNCv4lWAP.thumbnail"
      }
    ],
    "parts": [
      {
        "name": "iPhone 14 Battery",
        "quantity": 1,
        "optional": false,
        "ifixit_product_url": "https://www.ifixit.com/products/iphone-14-replacement-battery",
        "ifixit_sku_slug": "iphone-14-replacement-battery",
        "thumbnail": "https://cart-products.cdn.ifixit.com/cart-products/...thumbnail"
      }
    ],
    "steps": [
      {
        "step_number": 1,
        "step_id": 280491,
        "title": "Eject the SIM card tray",
        "instructions": [
          { "text": "Insert a SIM card eject tool or a paperclip into the small hole in the SIM card tray.", "bullet": "black", "level": 0 },
          { "text": "Press firmly to eject the tray.", "bullet": "black", "level": 0 }
        ],
        "images": [
          "https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/3DrAgS2S2IaCnYj6.standard",
          "https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/3DrAgS2S2IaCnYj6.large"
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

// No guides matched
{
  "success": true,
  "query": "brother hl-2270dw",
  "total_results": 0,
  "more_results": false,
  "guides": [],
  "note": "No guides matched. Try dropping hyphens from model numbers or broaden the query."
}

// Guide id not found (per-guide fetch)
{
  "success": false,
  "reason": "guide_not_found",
  "guide_id": 99999999,
  "message": "Guide not found"
}

// API unreachable (after retries) — fall back to browser path or surface the failure
{
  "success": false,
  "reason": "api_unreachable",
  "details": "GET /api/2.0/search/... returned <status> after 3 retries; browser fallback also failed."
}