I'm now sure if this is the correct place for this question (or something like StackOverflow) but I'll ask it here first in any case. Does Minecraft have an API for obtaining information about it's craftable items?
Minecraft – Does Minecraft have an API
minecraft-java-edition
Related Solutions
Herobrine was a fictional character that was said to 'haunt' Minecraft. People would fake screenshots saying he followed them into caves or whatever. He was said to be Notch's dead brother (who doesn't exist).
With the mod that allows you to bring fake NPCs into the game, it became more common to put fake Herobrines into the game.
He does not exist and is a joke. This was Notch's response - trolling.
There is a ton of backstory and stuff here.
The statistics are stored in your Minecraft data folder under stats, and Minecraft Wiki has some details on the format. We can see from the filenames (e.g. stats_kpreid_unsent.dat) that they are stored per-user. It does matter whether you are playing offline, because if you are offline it is as if you are playing the default username “Player” and so those statistics will be kept separately.
The statistics are collected across all worlds.
I agree that the statistics are screwy in some cases, but I don't have any specific info. Besides various obvious general flaws (e.g. counting all dyes as Ink Sacs), Minecraft thinks I've crafted more sugar than torches...
Best Answer
No, there is no API that exposes in-game recipes to an external program. It would be feasible to write a mod that created such an interface, though I don't believe any such mod exists yet. That would require users to install a mod in order to use the external tool though, which would make such a tool useless to the majority of players with a "vanilla" (unmodded) version of Minecraft.