From curious to your first call
No prior code required. Understand what an API is, why Venice's is private, and make a real request, then graduate to the full developer docs.
Four small steps
This segment is API literacy, not the reference. The reference lives in the docs.
What is an API?
A way for your code to ask Venice for the same things the app does.
Get your key
Mint an API key from your account. It's how Venice knows the request is yours.
Your first call
Send one request, get one answer. Below: copy, paste, run.
Read the response
Understand the JSON that comes back, then build from there.
Say hello to a private model
Venice speaks the OpenAI-compatible format, so most existing tools and snippets just work.
# one request, one answer curl https://api.venice.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $VENICE_API_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "model": "venice-uncensored", "messages": [ { "role": "user", "content": "Say hi in one line." } ] }'
What's happening here
api.venice.ai/api/v1/chat/completions is the endpoint, the same shape OpenAI uses, so your existing code ports over.
The Authorization header carries your key. Keep it secret; treat it like a password.
model picks which private model answers; messages is the conversation. The reply comes back as JSON with the model's message inside.
Building an agent, not learning yourself?
An AI agent can skip this entire page and read docs.venice.ai/llms.txt directly, a machine-readable index of the whole API. It can even onboard without a human in the loop. This segment is for the curious human; the docs serve the machines.
That's the literacy. Ready for everything?
Every endpoint, parameter, SDK, and integration (image, video, audio, characters, billing) lives in the developer docs. This page got you to your first call; the docs take you the rest of the way.
Learn gets you making. The docs let you build.
Cross the line the moment a need becomes "automate this."