utility

Explain a failed API response

Paste a failed response (its status and body) and get back the fault in plain words, the steps that fix it, a corrected request when the error's own details allow one, whether retrying the same request can succeed, and the docs link. Covers bad or misnamed parameters (including a value sent as a parameter name), missing parameters, invalid values, wrong paths, auth, credits, key limits, rate limits, upstream failures and not-found. Pass the body as JSON or base64url JSON (up to 8,000 characters) and, optionally, the request you sent as request (API keys in it are dropped). The answer is computed from the error type and details the API returned; nothing is fetched. Free to call.

get/utility/explain-error

Request

  • Base URL: https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1
  • URL: https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/utility/explain-error
  • Auth: API key in header x-api-key

Query parameters

statusinteger

The HTTP status of the failed response. Optional when the body carries error.status (one of: body, status; at least one required)

bodystring

The pasted response body: the JSON error envelope (URL-encoded or base64url) or plain text. Up to 8,000 characters. Provide this or status (one of: body, status; at least one required)

requeststring

The request that failed, as a URL or /v1 path with its query string. Lets the answer return a corrected request. Credentials in it are dropped

Headers

Cache-Controlstring

Send no-cache to bypass the response cache and force a live fetch. Billed at the normal endpoint cost; the fresh result is written back to cache for the next caller. Only the no-cache directive triggers this. See the Response Schema guide for details.

Idempotency-Keystring

Optional UUID that makes the request safely retriable. The key is reserved atomically per account before billing. A concurrent retry receives 409 IDEMPOTENCY_IN_PROGRESS with a Retry-After of 1 second while the original is young, growing to a quarter of the time it has been running (at most 30); a crashed reservation expires after 5 minutes. A replay keeps the cached payload immutable except for billing metadata: credits_used becomes 0, idempotent_replay becomes true, and credits_remaining is refreshed to the current balance. A known current balance appears in both the body and X-Credits-Remaining header; no balance row resolves to 0. On a transient lookup failure, body credits_remaining is null and X-Credits-Remaining is omitted. Completed outcomes expire after 24 hours. If the claim store is unavailable, the request fails closed before billing. GET endpoints do not combine idempotent replay with Server-Sent Events: use Accept: application/json when sending this header. The unsupported key-plus-SSE combination is rejected before billing.

Response

Successful response

successboolean required

Whether the request succeeded

platformstring required

Platform name

endpointstring required

API endpoint path

credits_usedinteger required

Number of credits consumed

credits_remaininginteger nullable required

Current account balance, or null when this response could not establish one. Free cache hits always return null because they do not establish an authoritative post-request balance. An idempotency replay also returns null when its current-balance lookup fails. It is never a fabricated zero, so a zero here means the account really is empty. The authoritative reading is the one on a billed response, which comes straight from the deduction.

request_idstring required

Unique request identifier for support

cachedboolean required

Whether the response was served from cache

idempotent_replayboolean

True only when this response is an idempotency replay

Example response

{
  "success": true,
  "platform": "utility",
  "endpoint": "/v1/utility/explain-error",
  "credits_used": 1,
  "credits_remaining": 4999,
  "request_id": "req-abc123",
  "idempotent_replay": true,
  "meta": {
    "hint": {
      "code": "search_multi",
      "message": "You searched \"matcha\" on 3 platforms one call at a time; /v1/search/multi returns each platform's own search rows in one call at the same price per platform, and a platform with no rows is not charged.",
      "method": "GET",
      "path": "/v1/search/multi?query=matcha&platforms=instagram,tiktok,youtube"
    }
  }
}

Changes

No recorded changes to this operation across all 1 revision of this API.