Get storiesRead one of Lobsters' three front-page feeds: Hottest (the front page, ranked by the site's own hotness), Newest (in the order they were submitted) or Active (whatever is being discussed right now). Stories come back in the feed's own order, each with its link, tags, score, comment count and who submitted it.
Get stories with a tagRead the stories carrying one or more Lobsters tags, newest first - 'rust', 'security', 'ask' and the hundred-odd others the site files stories under. Picking several widens the result rather than narrowing it: a story carrying any one of them is included. The tag list is fetched from Lobsters, so it is always the tags the site currently has.
Get stories in a categoryRead the stories in one of the twelve groups Lobsters files its tags under - programming languages, operating systems, tools, practices and so on. Broader than a tag: choosing 'Programming languages' returns everything tagged with any of the thirty-odd language tags at once.
Get stories from a siteRead every story Lobsters holds that links to one website, newest first - everything from lwn.net, or from your own blog. Takes a bare domain or any page URL on it; the path and a leading 'www.' are dropped for you, because Lobsters files stories under the bare host.
Get someone's storiesRead the stories one person has submitted to Lobsters, newest first. Takes the username in any capitalisation, with or without its leading '~', or a link to their profile.
Get a storyRead one story together with its whole comment thread. Takes the six-character id Lobsters gives a story or any lobste.rs link to it, including one copied from a browser. Comments come back as a flat list, each carrying how deep in the thread it sits and which comment it replies to, so a step can read them straight through or rebuild the thread from them.
Get a commentRead one comment on its own: its text, its score, who wrote it and which story it belongs to. Takes the comment's id or any link to it, including the '#c_...' link a browser copies from the middle of a thread.
Get someone's profileRead a Lobsters profile: how long they have been a member, their karma, their write-up, who invited them, and the GitHub and Mastodon accounts they have linked. Takes the username in any capitalisation or a link to the profile.
List tagsRead every tag Lobsters files stories under, alphabetically, each with the site's own description of it and the category it belongs to. This is the vocabulary the other actions filter on, so it is what a workflow reads to decide which tag to follow.
