A key challenge for FAIR software and datasets is creating metadata and keeping it updated. Open APIs provide an efficient way of automating metadata, and I’ll share some specific examples for both research software and datasets. We’ll look at automation I’ve created for CaltechDATA, the institutional data and software repository for Caltech. I’ll discuss current and future plans for automation in InvenioRDM, the open-source repository platform based on Zenodo and designed for institutions.