--- title: "Create an API key" method: POST path: "/api-keys" tags: ["API keys"] --- # Create an API key `POST /api-keys` ## Request - Base URL: `https://app.mandala.computer/api/v1` - URL: `https://app.mandala.computer/api/v1/api-keys` - Auth: HTTP bearer Mints a key for the key’s holder on this account. The answer carries the raw key in `raw`, once: it is stored only as a hash and no route returns it again. Needs a key with `manage_keys` on, and a member or owner role (a viewer mints from the dashboard). A key cannot mint a key with `manage_keys` on (`403`): only the dashboard grants it. Nor can it mint one wider than itself. Without `workspace_id` a key confined to a workspace mints into that workspace, and naming any other scope, `null` included, is a `403`. An account-wide key may name any workspace of the account (an unknown one is a `400`) or none, for another account-wide key. The body is optional. No body, or one of nothing but whitespace, mints an unnamed key exactly as `{}` does. The account holds at most 1000 keys, whoever minted them; the next is a `400`. Requires the `member` role or higher. ## Request body - object - `name` string, nullable: A label, up to 60 characters; longer is cut; control, bidirectional and invisible formatting characters (such as U+200B and U+2060) are refused (`400`), while the joiners U+200C and U+200D and the variation selectors (such as U+FE0F) that emoji and some scripts need are allowed. Optional; `null` is the same as leaving it out. - `workspace_id` string, nullable: The workspace to confine the new key to, or leave it out. See above for a workspace-scoped key. - `manage_keys` boolean: Must be `false` or absent. `true` is refused: only the dashboard grants it. ## Response `201` The key, with the raw key in `raw`. - ApiKeyCreated - `id` string, required: As on `ApiKey`. - `name` string, nullable, required: As on `ApiKey`. - `prefix` string, required: As on `ApiKey`. - `created_at` string, required: RFC 3339 timestamp. - `last_used_at` string, nullable, required: Always `null`: the key has not been used yet. - `workspace_id` string, nullable, required: As on `ApiKey`. - `workspace_name` string, nullable, required: As on `ApiKey`. - `manage_keys` boolean, required: As on `ApiKey`. Always `false` for a key minted over the API. - `minted_by_key_id` string, nullable, required: As on `ApiKey`. Always the id of the key that made this request. - `raw` string, required: The key: `com_` and 48 hex characters. **Shown here and never again** — store it now. Send it as `Authorization: Bearer `. ## Other responses - `400`: The request was malformed — a bad resolution string, a missing `command`, a `{pid}` or `{window}` that is not one. It is also what a well-formed request gets when the thing it names cannot be acted on and never will be — a restore onto a computer that is gone, for instance. Either way it is final: the message says what is wrong, and sending it again unchanged answers the same. That is the whole difference from a `503`, which means ask again shortly. - `401`: Platform authentication required or refused: reason is missing, invalid, or revoked, with WWW-Authenticate: Bearer (invalid_token for invalid/revoked). - `403`: The credential is recognized but its holder lacks the required role or membership, or the holder/account is suspended, or the holder has not verified their email address. An ordinary denial for too low a role may carry no `reason`. The email one carries none either, and its message begins `Verify your email before`: it answers a create, a clone of a computer or a snapshot, a new API key and a new SSH key, and is cleared by verifying the address in the dashboard. `reason: "revoked"` marks authority that is gone: a suspended account or a lost membership (refused as the request arrives, or if it happens while the request is in flight), or a role that was lowered while the request was in flight. The message identifies the refusal; replacing a valid key alone does not restore authority, and sending the same call again does not help. Also, with no `reason`: this key does not have `manage_keys` on; the body asked for `manage_keys: true`; a workspace-scoped key named another scope; or the key’s holder has not verified their email address (`Verify your email before creating an API key.`). - `405`: This public path exists but does not accept that method. Allow lists only its public methods, with HEAD for GET and metadata OPTIONS. - `413`: What you sent, or asked for, is past a size limit. A JSON request body is capped at 1 MiB unless the route states its own limit: `POST /computers/{id}/exec` takes up to 4 MiB, and some routes take less; guest file transfers, template documents and the clipboard have limits of their own. The message names the limit that applied. This route reads at most 4 KiB (4096 bytes) of request body, less than the general cap. - `429`: You are asking faster than your plan allows. `Retry-After` says how many seconds to wait, and every metered response — anything past authentication and the re-check that your credential’s authority still holds — carries `RateLimit-Remaining`, so you do not have to be refused to find out. A `401`, a `403` from that re-check, an `OPTIONS` answer and an unexpected `500` carry none. The budget is spent in proportion to what a call costs rather than per request. What a call costs, in budget units, by kind (each operation’s exact figure is its `x-rate-cost` in the OpenAPI document): 1 to read one thing; 5 for a listing that spans the fleet, and 5 for a call into a running guest such as a screenshot or an exec; 10 for a power change and 10 to move file bytes; 25 for `GET /usage`, `GET /credits`, creating a public URL, and creating, rotating or testing a webhook; 50 to capture a snapshot; 100 to create, clone or restore a computer, and 100 to start an agent run, whose actions are then charged as they happen. The account-wide budget, as what an idle caller may spend at once and what refills each minute: No plan 1200 at once and 1200 a minute; Solo 4800 at once and 4800 a minute; Studio 12000 at once and 12000 a minute; Swarm 21600 at once and 21600 a minute. A single API key gets half of either. A `401` for a missing or unusable credential costs nothing: it is refused before anything is metered. A few refusals at the door cost one unit: a `403` because the role is too low or the route refuses an API key confined to a workspace, a `404` for a path that matches nothing, a `405`, and an `Idempotency-Key` answered from its stored result or still in progress. Everything else is charged in full when it is admitted, before it is carried out, so a refusal after that has spent the whole cost: a `400`, `402` or `409` from the route, a `403` its handler sends (on most routes, a suspended account included), and a model provider’s `401` on an agent run. The budget belongs to the account and is shared across everything on it, and any single API key may spend at most half of it. `RateLimit-Limit` is whichever of those two is binding on the request that carried it — usually the per-key half, and the account-wide figure when other keys have already spent more of it than this one has. All three `RateLimit-*` headers describe the same one, so `limit` minus `remaining` is what has been spent against it. A few `429`s are not about this budget, say so in their message, and can carry no `Retry-After`: a model provider’s rate limit relayed on an agent run. The cap on forks of one snapshot waiting for their secrets sends its own bounded expiry-based `Retry-After` with `reason: "contention"` (see `POST /snapshots/{id}/clone`). - `500`: The application could not finish this: an unexpected exception, a build that broke, or a storage fault. Application refusals carry the request correlation ID; unexpected internal details are not returned. --- [API](https://skmtc.dev/mandala/apis/mandala-computer-api.md) · [All operations](https://skmtc.dev/mandala/apis/mandala-computer-api/llms.txt) · [OpenAPI document](https://skmtc.dev/mandala/apis/mandala-computer-api/revisions/2afbb87fa703?raw)