"🤯\">WTFaaS — What The Fuck as a Service
WTFaaS.dev
A small HTTP API for small emergencies

WTFaaS*

What The Fuck as a Service.
Tiny answers for life's and software's tiny WTF moments.

Explore the modulesView on GitHub
a random endpoint, right now
$ curl https://wtfaas.dev/reason/delay

{
  "module": "reason",
  "category": "delay",
  "message": "We need to verify the result before release.",
  "tone": "professional",
  "meta": {
    "seed": null,
    "deterministic": false
  }
}
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Try it
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Send a real request.

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Pick a module, click any category to load it into the box, then run it. Edit the path by hand if you would rather type, and add a seed when you want the same answer twice.

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Hand it an HTTP status, a system error code, or an acronym. It answers with one plain sentence plus the structured facts around it.

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Routes

GET /wtf/http/:code
the 12 statuses below, with likely causes and next checks
GET /wtf/error/:code
errno-style failures you find in a log
GET /wtf/acronym/:term
jargon lookup
GET /wtf/:term
shorthand for the acronym form, except for terms that collide with a lookup kind
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Response fields

type
Which lookup answered: http, error, or acronym.
name / term
The canonical identity, normalised. /wtf/cors and /wtf/acronym/CORS both come back as CORS.
expansion
Acronyms only. What the letters actually stand for.
meaning
The definition. Fixed text — it never varies between requests.
wtf
The plain-language line, and the only field the wording pool touches.
likely_causes
HTTP statuses only. The usual suspects behind that code.
try
HTTP statuses only. Concrete things to check next.
common_mistake
Acronyms only. The wrong assumption people keep making about it.
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http statuses

400Bad Request401Unauthorized403Forbidden404Not Found408Request Timeout409Conflict418I'm a Teapot429Too Many Requests500Internal Server Error502Bad Gateway503Service Unavailable504Gateway Timeout

error codes

ECONNRESETECONNREFUSEDETIMEDOUTENOTFOUNDEADDRINUSEENOENTOOM

acronyms

CORSCross-Origin Resource SharingDNSDomain Name SystemTLSTransport Layer SecurityJWTJSON Web TokenOAuthOpen AuthorizationHTTPHypertext Transfer Protocol
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A reason you can send to a person, scaled to the situation. Nobody has to invent a family emergency.

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Routes

GET /excuse/:category
one excuse from that scenario’s pool
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Parameters

tone
Echoed back as tone and shifts which wording you land on. Free text, 32 characters.
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Response fields

excuse
The excuse. Also repeated as message, so the text format finds it.
plausibility
A fixed self-assessment, 0.78. It is a joke, not a score.
follow_up_risk
Likewise fixed at 0.25. The odds someone asks a second question.
tone
Whatever you passed, or professional.
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scenarios

camera-offcancelcode-reviewdeadlinedeployemaillateleave-earlymeetingmissed-calloutagereplyschoolwork
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Offload a small decision. It commits to an answer and says something about it, which is more than most meetings manage.

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Routes

GET /decide?choices=a,b,c
picks one of your options
GET /decide/a/b/c
the same thing with the options in the path
GET /decide/yes-no
a binary answer with a confidence
GET /decide/coin
heads or tails
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Parameters

choices
Two to twenty comma-separated options, each at most 128 characters. Anything outside that returns 400 INVALID_CHOICES.
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Response fields

choice
The option it landed on. /decide/yes-no calls it answer instead.
index
Where that option sat in the list you sent.
choices
Your options, parsed and trimmed, so you can check what it actually read.
confidence
Yes/no answers only. Always 0.73.
message
The decision phrased as a sentence.
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fixed decks

yes-nocoinchoicesyour own list
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A compact line for a status page, a channel topic, or a dashboard tile, with the machine-readable bits attached.

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Routes

GET /status/:category
one status line, plus severity and state
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Response fields

message
The status sentence.
state
A normalised state. Mostly the category, except broken → down and done → complete.
severity
5 for broken, 2 for everything else.
emoji
A glyph for the four categories that have one, otherwise •.
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categories

blockedbrokendegradeddeployingdonefridayinvestigatingmaintenanceofflinewaitingworking
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Ten shades of “got it”, so you can stop typing “noted” by hand.

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Routes

GET /ack/:category
one acknowledgement
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Response fields

message
The acknowledgement.
acknowledged
true for every category except rejected.
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categories

approvedbegrudgingdonenotedreceived/receiptrejectedseenthanksunderstoodwill-do
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A plausible suspect and something to actually check. The only module that hands back a next step.

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Routes

GET /blame/:category
a culprit and a diagnostic check
GET /blame
falls back to the general category
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Response fields

message
The theory, in a sentence.
culprit
The component being accused.
check
A real diagnostic step for that theory.
confidence
Always 0.74. It is a bit, not telemetry.
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categories

backendcidatabasedeadlinedeployfrontendgeneralmeetingnetworkoutageperformance
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Take a stated duration and return what it tends to mean once the work starts.

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Routes

GET /eta/:category?estimate=2d
normalises the estimate and inflates it by audience
GET /eta
falls back to software and 2d
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Parameters

estimate
One duration: a number of up to four digits and a unit of s, m, h, d, or w. Anything else returns 400 INVALID_DURATION.
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Response fields

stated_eta
Your estimate, spelled out — “2 days”.
interpreted_eta
A range after the category’s inflation factor. honest is the one category that never inflates.
normalized_seconds
The estimate in seconds, for anything doing arithmetic.
input
The raw string you sent, echoed for logging.
message
The estimate as a sentence.
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audiences

softwaredeploycontractormeetingdownloadmigrationsupportmanagerhonestno inflation
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The grown-up sibling of Excuse: a defensible reason for an action you have already taken.

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Routes

GET /reason/:category
one reason for that action
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Parameters

tone
Echoed back as tone and shifts the wording. Defaults to professional.
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Response fields

message
The reason.
tone
Whatever you passed, or professional.
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actions

canceldeclinedelayleave-earlymaintenancepauserate-limitrejectreschedulerollbackskip-meeting
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Fictional content shaped like the real thing, for demos and tests. It reads as plausible copy instead of Latin.

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Routes

GET /placeholder/:category
the category’s default shape
GET /placeholder/:category/:kind
a specific shape
GET /placeholder/:category?count=n
n items, 1 to 25
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Parameters

count
An integer from 1 to 25. Outside that returns 400 INVALID_COUNT.
kind
Path segment. One of card, text, product, issue, profile, review, article, commit, status, company. It decides the field names; the category decides the subject matter.
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Response fields

data
An object when count is 1, an array when it is more. Branch on that, not on the category.
kind
The shape that was used, including the default one when you did not ask for a kind.
category
Echoed so batched responses stay self-describing.
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categories

startupsaastextecommerceproductgithubissuestatus-pageblognewslegalmedicalfinancerestaurantportfoliodashboardsocialreviewsusersproducts
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\nGET\n\n\n\n\n
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Ready when you are.
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Your response lands here.\n\nTry a seed to get the same answer twice, switch the format to see it as plain text, or point the path at something that does not exist — the 404 lists everything that does.
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Why this exists

Most apps eventually need a sentence.

A status message. An acknowledgment. A placeholder. A reason. A tiny explanation.

WTFaaS is a pile of those tiny things, wrapped in a clean HTTP API.

  1. No AI required

    Curated corpora and small deterministic algorithms. Fast, cheap, and unsurprising.

  2. Edge-hosted

    It runs on Cloudflare Workers. Most requests should mostly be network latency.

  3. Deterministic when needed

    Add ?seed=demo for tests, screenshots, fixtures, and repeatable bot behavior.

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Pricing
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Pick a tier.

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One of these is real.

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Free
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$0forever
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Everything the API does today, which is everything the API does.

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  • All 9 modules and 113 categories
  • 2,260 curated replies, 20 per category
  • JSON, plain text, and HTML
  • Deterministic seeding with ?seed=
  • Edge-cached seeded responses
  • OpenAPI schema and /modules catalogue
  • 100 requests per hour, no account, no key
  • MIT licensed — fork it and self-host
\nStart sending requests\n
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ProComing soon
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$500$5/month
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A price reduction of 99%, achieved by not having built it yet.

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  • Unlimited requests
  • GraphQL access
  • 99.99% uptime SLA
  • Priority edge routing
  • Custom reply corpora
  • Webhook delivery
  • Usage analytics
  • Support with a response time
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EnterpriseComing soon
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Contact sales
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For organisations that need a procurement process around an excuse generator.

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  • SSO via SAML 2.0
  • OAuth 2.0 and OIDC
  • SCIM user provisioning
  • Role-based access control
  • Audit logs and data residency
  • Dedicated tenancy
  • Custom SLAs and security review
  • Named solutions architect
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The Free tier is the whole product. Everything to the right of it is a bit — there is no billing, no sales team, and nothing to contact. If you need one of those features, the licence is MIT and the corpus is a folder of text files.

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Developer details

Boring protocol. Useful payloads.

# routes
GET /wtf/http/:code GET /wtf/error/:code
GET /wtf/acronym/:term GET /wtf/:term
GET /excuse/:category GET /status/:category
GET /decide?choices=a,b,c GET /ack/:category
GET /blame/:category GET /reason/:category
GET /eta/:category?estimate=2d
GET /placeholder/:category/:kind

# the rest of it
GET /random GET /modules
GET /health GET /openapi.json

# formats
Accept: application/json Accept: text/plain Accept: text/html

# reproducibility
?seed=demo
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