Wait Desk / API
Get a token

Driving Wait Desk from code

Everything the web app does is available over HTTP. The base URL is https://api.skillsafe.ai/v1/app-api, every request carries Authorization: Bearer <token>, and every response is the same envelope.

The task field comes first

This app has five lanes behind one endpoint. Every run body must carry a task field naming the lane - it is what the system prompt routes on. Send the wrong one and you get a valid package of the wrong kind; omit it and the model picks the closest lane and tells you which it chose.

One more shape trap: the run body is the input object. Do not wrap it in an {"input": ...} envelope - that returns 200 while hiding task from the model, which is the most confusing way this API can fail.

taskLaneFieldsSections returned
planSize a queue that meets its targetbrief, knownSummary, The Queue, The Numbers, Reasoning, Next Step
readWhat this queue actually waits, and how deep it getssheet, worrySummary, Verdict, Findings, Corrected Queue, Next Step
waitThe wait: what utilisation costs and what a worker buyssheetSummary, Every Class’s Wait, What The Last Five Points Cost, What One More Worker Buys, Next Step
drainThe backlog: how deep it goes and how long it takes to clearsheetSummary, The Backlog After An Outage, How Long It Takes To Drain, What Retries Add, Next Step
decideDecide what changes: a worker, the variance, or the arrival ratesheet, fixedSummary, A Worker Fixes, Only Less Variance Or Less Load Fixes, Nothing Fixes, Next Step

Only task and the lane's own required fields are mandatory: sheet on read, wait, drain and decide; brief on plan. Every field is a string - there are no number fields on this app. sheet is the queue sheet itself: a header of KEY: value lines and a QUEUES: block with one job class per line. Order does not matter - a set of queues is a set - so the reader's only job is to lose nothing.

TARGET: and OUTAGE: take 500ms, 2s, 10m or 1h; assumed 1s and 60s. The target is the wait a class is allowed - whether a wait is acceptable is the one thing this arithmetic cannot decide. The outage is a full stop, and it exists because the recovery time is the same coefficient as the wait. POOLED: takes a yes or a no. WORKERS: is a default for classes that do not declare their own.

A class needs service= and nothing else. It takes 100ms, 1.5s or 2m, and a bare number is MILLISECONDS. arrivals= takes 90/s, 5400/min or 100000/day, and a bare number is PER SECOND - the unit decides the answer completely, because a rate read per second when it was per minute is a utilisation sixty times too high. workers= is a count. cs2= and ca2= are the squared coefficients of variation of the service time and the arrivals - variance ÷ mean² - assumed 1, which is exponential and makes Kingman's factor exactly 1. fail= takes 10% or 0.1 and attempts= a count; together they multiply the ARRIVAL rate by 1 + p + p² + …, not by the attempt count. target= overrides the header for one class.

Everything in the response is a function of one ratio. Utilisation is arrivals × service ÷ workers; the wait is Erlang C, which reduces to ρ/(1−ρ) times the service time at one worker; the depth is λ × Wq by Little's Law; and the drain multiple is the same ρ/(1−ρ) again. So a change to any of the four inputs moves every figure at once, and the response reports the ratio to four decimal places because the third one is usually the finding.

Anything the reader cannot place is listed as a problem rather than skipped, and so is a class named twice or one whose arrivals= is unreadable. A class with no service= is an error: capacity is workers ÷ service time, so without the divisor there is no capacity, no utilisation and no place on the curve - and it also vanishes from the pooling comparison, which is about the SUM of the arrivals against the SUM of the workers.

A utilisation is reported to four decimal places, a duration as 100ms, 1.9s or 16.65h, a rate as 90/s, a depth to two places and a multiple as . These are MEANS, not percentiles - the distribution behind the wait is roughly exponential, so the p95 is about three times it - and nothing is measured: every figure is arithmetic on the four numbers you send, so a service time twenty percent out makes every wait wrong by much more than that.

Add $model to any body to choose the model for that run: gpt-5.6-luna, gpt-5.6-terra (the default) or gpt-5.6-sol. Luna caps output at 4,096 tokens and will fail the read, wait and drain lanes rather than shorten them - a findings table, a corrected queue, or three tables with a row per job class, is several thousand characters before the reasoning starts.

The response envelope

Success and failure have the same outer shape, so one check covers both.

{
  "ok": true,
  "data": {
    "...": "the result"
  }
}
{
  "ok": false,
  "error": {
    "code": "VALIDATION_ERROR",
    "message": "seconds should be number, got string",
    "details": {}
  }
}
HTTPerror.codeWhat it means
400VALIDATION_ERRORThe body was not a JSON object, or a declared field had the wrong type. A number field sent as a string is the usual cause.
401UNAUTHORIZEDNo token, or a token that has expired or been revoked. Mint a new one.
402INSUFFICIENT_CREDITSThe balance is below the run's minimum. Call /estimate first and compare hold_credits against /me.
404NOT_FOUNDWrong path, or a job id that does not belong to this token.
409CONFLICTAn Idempotency-Key replay whose body differs from the original request.
429RATE_LIMITEDToo many requests. Back off; do not tight-loop.
503UPSTREAM_UNAVAILABLEThe model provider is unavailable. Retry with backoff.

1. Get a token

Open /tokens.html in a browser and copy the token this app already holds - no developer console needed. A guest token is minted automatically and is enough for /me and /estimate; writing a package is metered and needs a personal token, which comes from signing in on that page.

Keep it in an environment variable rather than in source:

export SKILLSAFE_TOKEN="YOUR_TOKEN"

2. Check the session and the balance

GET /me is free. It returns only three fields: subject_type, subject_id and credits. Signed-in means subject_type == "user" - there is no username or email to test.

curl -sS -X GET "https://api.skillsafe.ai/v1/app-api/me" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SKILLSAFE_TOKEN"

3. Price the run before making it

POST /estimate costs nothing, creates no job, and returns the worst-case cost. Compare hold_credits against the balance from step 2 before you submit: a 402 after the fact is avoidable. hold_credits is a reservation priced at the full output cap - the actual charge is usually far lower.

It also echoes model, model_alias and markup_bps, which is the authoritative check that a run is bound to the model you think it is. Estimate each lane separately: their prompts and caps differ, so their holds do.

curl -sS -X POST "https://api.skillsafe.ai/v1/app-api/estimate" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SKILLSAFE_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
  "task": "read",
  "sheet": "<TARGET, OUTAGE and a QUEUES block, one job class per line; the grammar is in /llms.txt>",
  "worry": "it is fine all week and then one deploy puts us hours behind",
  "rules": "<the working rules for this lane, sent by the app>"
}'

4. Write a package

POST /run submits the job. Always send an Idempotency-Key: a network blip that replays the same request must not bill twice. A replay with the same key returns the stored result and is not charged again; a replay with the same key but a different body is a 409.

The response carries output.output (the Markdown package), charged_credits and truncated. If truncated is true the balance sat between min_credits and hold_credits and the output was cut short - render what arrived and say so rather than presenting it as complete.

curl -sS -X POST "https://api.skillsafe.ai/v1/app-api/run" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SKILLSAFE_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
  "task": "read",
  "sheet": "<TARGET, OUTAGE and a QUEUES block, one job class per line; the grammar is in /llms.txt>",
  "worry": "it is fine all week and then one deploy puts us hours behind",
  "rules": "<the working rules for this lane, sent by the app>"
}'

5. Stream a run

POST /run-stream is the same call with a text/event-stream response. Worth knowing before you build on it: from a server or from cURL you get event: delta frames carrying the output token by token; from a browser you get event: tick heartbeats and then one event: done with the whole output. Handle both, and treat ticks as liveness rather than progress.

Frame types are job (the job id), delta ({"text": "..."}), tick ({"t": seconds}), done, and error. An idempotent replay returns plain JSON with no stream at all, so check the content type before you start reading frames.

curl -sS -N -X POST "https://api.skillsafe.ai/v1/app-api/run-stream" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SKILLSAFE_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: text/event-stream" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: cbd-$(date +%s)" \
  -d '{
  "task": "read",
  "sheet": "<TARGET, OUTAGE and a QUEUES block, one job class per line; the grammar is in /llms.txt>",
  "worry": "it is fine all week and then one deploy puts us hours behind",
  "rules": "<the working rules for this lane, sent by the app>"
}'

6. Read the result

output.output is Markdown in the envelope this app's system prompt guarantees: every section is a level-two heading spelled exactly as listed in the lane table above, in that order; tables are GitHub pipe tables with the declared columns; prompts are in fenced blocks opened with three backticks and the word text; checklists are - [x] lines.

So parsing is a split on /^## / - but do it fence-aware, because a prompt block can legitimately contain a line starting with ##. Count the sections you got against the ones the lane declares: a short list means the run was truncated, not that the contract changed.

def sections(md):
    out, name, buf, fence = {}, None, [], False
    for line in md.split("\n"):
        if line.lstrip().startswith("```"):
            fence = not fence
        if not fence and line.startswith("## "):
            if name:
                out[name] = "\n".join(buf).strip()
            name, buf = line[3:].strip(), []
            continue
        if name:
            buf.append(line)
    if name:
        out[name] = "\n".join(buf).strip()
    return out

The artifact most callers want is the fenced text block inside ## The Sheet or ## Corrected Sheet - that is a complete sheet in the grammar above, so it can be fed straight back into another lane with nothing carried alongside it. Every other section is prose and tables meant to be read.

Rate limits and good manners