# Vanilla Forums (Higher Logic Vanilla)

> Vanilla Forums is the cloud community-forum platform now sold as Higher Logic Vanilla. Every Vanilla community serves a REST API (API v2) at /api/v2 with a per-site OpenAPI 3 description, personal-access-token and JWT bearer authentication, webhooks with HMAC-signed deliveries, and an official MCP server (launched May 2026) that connects AI tools to live community data.

Generated by the API Evangelist enrichment pipeline on 2026-07-21 (method: generated — the provider publishes no llms.txt on vanillaforums.com or success.vanillaforums.com; the parent company serves a marketing-oriented one at https://www.higherlogic.com/llms.txt).

## APIs

- [Vanilla API v2 reference](https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/1842-api-v2-endpoints): Up-to-date API reference for all public API v2 endpoints; each community also serves its own tailored reference in the Dashboard (Settings > API Integrations > API v2)
- [OpenAPI 3.0.3 (harvested)](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/vanilla-forums/refs/heads/main/openapi/vanilla-api-openapi-original.json): 242 paths / 371 operations / 300 schemas, captured from https://open.vanillaforums.com/api/v2/open-api/v3
- [Analytics API](https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/43-analytics-api): Analytics endpoints of API v2

## Docs

- [API and Webhooks docs](https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/categories/97-api-and-webhooks): API v2 overview, authentication, rate limits, webhooks, smart IDs, date filters, ID ranges, CSV export
- [API v2 overview](https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/40-api-v2-overview): pagination (page/limit + Link header), fields parameter
- [Authentication: personal access tokens](https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/41-authenticating-apiv2-calls-with-personal-access-tokens): Bearer or access_token query parameter
- [Authentication: JWT](https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/122-authenticating-api-v2-calls-with-jwt): HS256 JWT as RFC 6750 bearer token
- [Authentication: role tokens](https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/436-authenticating-api-v2-calls-with-role-tokens): short-lived cacheable JWTs via POST /api/v2/tokens/roles
- [Rate limits](https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/44-rate-limits): 300 GET/min/IP, 120 writes/min/IP, HTTP 429
- [Webhooks](https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/262-webhooks): event catalog + X-Vanilla-Signature HMAC-SHA1 signing
- [Model Context Protocol (MCP) in Vanilla](https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/1955-model-context-protocol-mcp-in-vanilla): official Vanilla MCP server for AI tools
- [Release notes](https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb): YYYY.NNN release trains (current 2026.012)
- [Status page](https://status.vanillaforums.com/)

## Product

- [Higher Logic Vanilla](https://www.higherlogic.com/vanilla/): product home (vanillaforums.com redirects here)
- [Success community](https://success.vanillaforums.com/): docs, support, and community (runs on Vanilla itself)
- [GitHub organization](https://github.com/vanilla): jsConnect SSO clients (PHP/Java/Ruby/.NET/Python), Garden PHP libraries, porter migration tools

## Artifacts in this repo

- openapi/vanilla-api-openapi-original.json — harvested OpenAPI 3.0.3
- authentication/vanilla-forums-authentication.yml — auth profile (PAT, JWT, role tokens)
- conventions/vanilla-forums-conventions.yml — pagination, fields, expand, smart IDs, ranges, CSV export
- asyncapi/vanilla-forums-webhooks.yml — webhook event catalog + signing
- errors/vanilla-forums-problem-types.yml — BasicError envelope + status codes
- rate-limits/vanilla-forums-rate-limits.yml — per-IP limits
- changelog/vanilla-forums-changelog.yml — release trains
- mcp/vanilla-forums-mcp.yml — official Vanilla MCP server profile