About

The Advice Slip API serves over 10,000,000 slips per year. This generator pulls from that dataset in real time. Each slip is a short, peer-curated sentence designed to be immediately actionable. The search endpoint accepts any substring and returns ranked matches. If the API is unreachable (rate-limited at 2 requests per second, or offline), the tool falls back to a local corpus of 50 curated slips. Note: advice is crowd-sourced and unfiltered. It is not professional counsel. Treat each slip as a conversation starter, not a directive.

Formulas

The Advice Slip API uses a RESTful endpoint structure. A random slip is retrieved via a GET request to the random endpoint. The response payload contains an object with fields slip_id (integer) and advice (string).

GET api.adviceslip.com/advice → { slip_id: 42, advice: "string" }

Search queries follow the pattern:

GET api.adviceslip.com/advice/search/{query} → { total_results: n, slips: [...] }

The API enforces a rate limit of 1 request per second. The cache-bust strategy appends a timestamp parameter to prevent browser caching of the random endpoint. Where t = Date.now().

Reference Data

Category	Example Advice	Typical Use
Productivity	"Don't let small things ruin your day."	Morning routine prompts
Relationships	"Remember that spiders are more afraid of you than you are of them."	Icebreaker conversations
Self-Improvement	"It's not a mistake, it's a lesson."	Journaling prompts
Finance	"If you don't want something to be public, don't post it online."	Decision-making
Health	"Drink water. It solves most problems."	Daily reminders
Career	"Don't be afraid to ask for help."	Workplace reflection
Creativity	"Creativity comes from the joy of doing things."	Creative blocks
Social	"Listen more than you talk."	Communication training
Mindfulness	"Take a deep breath. It calms the mind."	Stress management
Humor	"Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night."	Mood lightening
Education	"Always read the small print."	Study habits
Travel	"Pack half the clothes and take twice the money."	Trip preparation
Resilience	"Fall seven times, stand up eight."	Motivational boards
Kindness	"A little kindness goes a long way."	Daily intention setting
Wisdom	"Silence is sometimes the best answer."	Conflict resolution

Frequently Asked Questions

The Advice Slip API uses a server-side cache with a 2-second TTL. If you click the button faster than that interval, the CDN may serve a cached response. This tool mitigates the issue by appending a cache-busting timestamp parameter, but the API's internal cache can still return duplicates. Wait at least 2 seconds between requests for guaranteed unique results.

The tool ships with a hardcoded corpus of 50 curated advice slips. If the fetch request fails (network error, CORS issue, or HTTP status outside the 200 range), the tool selects a random slip from this local pool using crypto.getRandomValues for uniform distribution. Search functionality is also available offline - it performs a case-insensitive substring match against the local corpus.

The Advice Slip API allows approximately 1 request per second. The generate button is automatically disabled for 1.5 seconds after each request to prevent HTTP 429 (Too Many Requests) responses. Search input is debounced at 500ms. If a rate limit error occurs, a toast notification informs you to wait before retrying.

The Advice Slip API is free and open. However, the advice content is crowd-sourced and not vetted for professional accuracy. Do not use the output as legal, medical, or financial guidance. For content generation, verify each slip against your editorial standards before publishing.

The API's search index is not a full-text engine. It matches against complete advice strings but may not index every common English word. Try more specific terms. For example, searching "money" yields results, but searching "the" may return an empty set due to stop-word filtering on the API side.