Quick Start

3 min read

This guide takes you from "no credentials" to a working authenticated request in four steps. You will create an account, sign in to establish a session, issue a Personal Access Token (PAT) for programmatic use, and call a tenant-scoped endpoint with the PAT.

Prerequisites: curl, Node.js 20+, or Python 3.10+.

Step 1 — Create an account

Sign up with email and password. This creates the user, provisions a default organization for them, and sends a verification email.

curl -X POST https://api.indexhog.com/api/auth/sign-up/email \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "password": "your-password",
  "name": "Your Name"
}'

const res = await fetch('https://api.indexhog.com/api/auth/sign-up/email', {
method: 'POST',
headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
credentials: 'include',
body: JSON.stringify({
  email: '[email protected]',
  password: 'your-password',
  name: 'Your Name',
}),
});
const data = await res.json();

Already have an account? Skip to Step 2 — existing users sign in directly.

Sign in via /api/auth/sign-in/email. The API responds with a Set-Cookie containing the session cookie. Browser clients persist it automatically; CLI clients keep a cookie jar and echo it back on each subsequent call.

# -c saves cookies, -b sends them back on later calls
curl -X POST https://api.indexhog.com/api/auth/sign-in/email \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-c cookies.txt \
-d '{
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "password": "your-password"
}'

// Browser: credentials: 'include' persists the cookie automatically.
// Node: use a cookie-aware client such as `tough-cookie` to keep the cookie across requests.
const res = await fetch('https://api.indexhog.com/api/auth/sign-in/email', {
method: 'POST',
headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
credentials: 'include',
body: JSON.stringify({
  email: '[email protected]',
  password: 'your-password',
}),
});

import requests

session = requests.Session() # holds cookies across requests
session.post(
'https://api.indexhog.com/api/auth/sign-in/email',
json={
'email': '[email protected]',
'password': 'your-password',
},
)

The session is now live. You can already call any /api/user/* account route by sending the cookie back. For headless work, continue to Step 3.

Step 3 — Issue a Personal Access Token

Call the API key endpoint while signed in (cookie attached). Choose a short list of scopes — do not ask for every permission. The full token value is returned exactly once; store it immediately.

curl -X POST https://api.indexhog.com/api/auth/api-key/create \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-b cookies.txt \
-d '{
  "name": "CI deploy bot",
  "expiresIn": 2592000,
  "metadata": {
    "scopes": ["user:read", "projects:read", "projects:write"]
  }
}'

const res = await fetch('https://api.indexhog.com/api/auth/api-key/create', {
method: 'POST',
headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
credentials: 'include',
body: JSON.stringify({
  name: 'CI deploy bot',
  expiresIn: 2592000, // 30 days in seconds, omit for no expiry
  metadata: { scopes: ['user:read', 'projects:read', 'projects:write'] },
}),
});
const { data } = await res.json();
const apiKey = data.key; // shown once — store it now

res = session.post(
  'https://api.indexhog.com/api/auth/api-key/create',
  json={
      'name': 'CI deploy bot',
      'expiresIn': 2592000,
      'metadata': {'scopes': ['user:read', 'projects:read', 'projects:write']},
  },
)
api_key = res.json()['data']['key']  # shown once

Response:

{
"success": true,
"status": 200,
"code": "OK",
"message": "API key created",
"data": {
  "id": "ak_abc123",
  "name": "CI deploy bot",
  "key": "tkn_AbCdEf0123456789XyZ...",
  "expiresAt": "2026-05-05T10:00:00.000Z"
}
}

The key field is only returned at creation. After this response, the value is no longer retrievable. If you lose it, revoke the token and issue a new one.

Step 4 — Call an authenticated endpoint

Send the PAT via the X-Api-Key header. For tenant-scoped routes (anything touching projects, payments, or members), the URL path carries the organization id. Get yours from GET /api/user/organizations.

# Account route — no organization id required
curl https://api.indexhog.com/api/user/me \
-H "X-Api-Key: tkn_AbCdEf0123456789XyZ..."

# Tenant route — substitute the organization id you fetched earlier

ORG_ID="01HZ3K5R4X9Y2V6QF8TJ7W0CDN"
curl "https://api.indexhog.com/api/user/organizations/${ORG_ID}/projects" \
-H "X-Api-Key: tkn_AbCdEf0123456789XyZ..."

const apiKey = '<your-api-key>'; // load this from a secure env var — never hardcode
const organizationId = '01HZ3K5R4X9Y2V6QF8TJ7W0CDN';

const headers = { 'X-Api-Key': apiKey };

// Account route
const me = await fetch('https://api.indexhog.com/api/user/me', { headers });

// Tenant route
const projects = await fetch(
`https://api.indexhog.com/api/user/organizations/${organizationId}/projects`,
{ headers },
);

import os, requests

api_key = os.environ['API_KEY']
organization_id = '01HZ3K5R4X9Y2V6QF8TJ7W0CDN'

headers = {'X-Api-Key': api_key}

me = requests.get('https://api.indexhog.com/api/user/me', headers=headers)
projects = requests.get(
f'https://api.indexhog.com/api/user/organizations/{organization_id}/projects',
headers=headers,
)

A successful response looks like this:

{
"success": true,
"status": 200,
"code": "OK",
"message": "User fetched successfully",
"data": {
  "id": "01HZ3K5R4X9Y2V6QF8TJ7W0CDN",
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "fullName": "Your Name",
  "handle": "yourname",
  "isVerified": true,
  "verifiedAt": "2026-04-05T10:05:00.000Z",
  "isActive": true,
  "lastLoginAt": "2026-04-05T10:00:00.000Z",
  "role": "user",
  "organizationCount": 1,
  "createdAt": "2026-04-05T10:00:00.000Z",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-05T10:00:00.000Z"
}
}

When to use each credential

Caller	Credential	Header sent
Browser-based UI	Session cookie	`Cookie: ...` (sent automatically)
Server acting as a signed-in user	Session cookie (echoed)	`Cookie: ...`
Scripts, CI, bots, integrations	Personal Access Token	`X-Api-Key: tkn_...`
Third-party app on behalf of a user	OAuth 2.1 access token	`Authorization: Bearer ...`
Enterprise SSO sign-in	Session via SSO flow	`Cookie: ...`

Best Practices

Never ship session cookies to scripts: Sessions are tied to a specific browser. Use a PAT for anything non-interactive.
Scope tokens down: Omit projects:write and api-keys:write from read-only automations. A smaller scope list is a smaller blast radius.
Set expiresIn on CI tokens: Rotating on a schedule limits damage if one leaks. Long-lived tokens belong only to infrastructure you trust.
Pin tokens to an organization when possible: Pass metadata: { organizationId: "..." } at creation time to lock the token to one tenant. The API rejects any request whose URL :organizationId does not match the pin.
Fail loudly on 401 / 403: A 401 means the credential is bad or expired. A 403 means the credential is valid but lacks a scope or does not belong to the requested organization. Retrying will not fix either.

Next Steps

Understand the envelope: Read API Structure for the pagination and response contract.
Handle errors: Review Error Handling.
Respect limits: See Rate Limits.
Choose scopes intentionally: Check Scopes & Permissions before you ship production tokens.
Browse endpoints: Start at the API Keys reference or the Projects reference.

Introduction

How the API is structured, how authentication works, and how multi-tenant requests are scoped

Connect via MCP

Point any MCP-capable AI client at the hosted MCP server and drive Indexhog over OAuth — no token to paste.

API Structure

Request headers, response envelope, pagination, and the query conventions shared by every endpoint

Error Handling

Error envelope, full code list, and the retry strategies that actually work

Introduction

Connect via MCP

Quick Start

Step 1 — Create an account

Step 2 — Sign in and capture the session cookie

Step 3 — Issue a Personal Access Token

Step 4 — Call an authenticated endpoint

When to use each credential

Best Practices

Next Steps

Related Pages

Introduction

Connect via MCP

API Structure

Error Handling