When debugging server issues or inspecting the expected results its often useful to run "utils/piston-helpers/piston_generic_helper.py" in debug mode. Some examples: $ PYTHONPATH=. utils/piston-helpers/piston_generic_helper.py \ --output=text --debug --needs-auth \ SoftwareCenterAgentAPI subscriptions_for_me $ PYTHONPATH=. utils/piston-helpers/piston_generic_helper.py \ --output=text --debug --needs-auth \ SoftwareCenterAgentAPI available_apps_qa \ '{ "lang" : "en", "series" : "oneiric", "arch" : "i386" }' $ PYTHONPATH=. utils/piston-helpers/piston_generic_helper.py \ --output=text --debug \ SoftwareCenterAgentAPI available_apps \ '{ "lang" : "en", "series" : "oneiric", "arch" : "i386" }' $ PYTHONPATH=. utils/piston-helpers/piston_generic_helper.py \ --output=text --debug \ SoftwareCenterRecommenderAPI recommend_top Any piston-mini-client API should work, first name is the class second the method to run, optional is a json encoded kwargs string. To get http debug output you can use the environment variable SOFTWARE_CENTER_DEBUG_HTTP=1.