Quickstart

This walkthrough takes you from zero to a first successful OCR scan.

1. Create an account

curl -X POST https://api-ocr.vanguardinitiative.com/v1/auth/signup \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"email":"demo@acme.com","password":"demo-pass-123"}'

2. Mint an API key

Use the session token to create an API key. The key is shown once — store it now.

curl -X POST https://api-ocr.vanguardinitiative.com/v1/auth/keys \
  -H "authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"name":"cli","scopes":["ocr"]}'

3. Run OCR

Send a document image with your API key.

curl -X POST https://api-ocr.vanguardinitiative.com/v1/ocr/scan \
  -H "authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
  -F image=@passport.jpg -F type=PASSPORT

const form = new FormData();
form.append('image', file);          // a File/Blob
form.append('type', 'PASSPORT');
const res = await fetch('https://api-ocr.vanguardinitiative.com/v1/ocr/scan', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { authorization: 'Bearer ' + API_KEY },
  body: form,
});
const data = await res.json();

import requests
with open('passport.jpg', 'rb') as f:
    res = requests.post(
        'https://api-ocr.vanguardinitiative.com/v1/ocr/scan',
        headers={'authorization': f'Bearer {API_KEY}'},
        files={'image': f},
        data={'type': 'PASSPORT'},
    )
print(res.json())

200 Extraction result

{
  "status": "success",
  "service": "ocr",
  "data": { "documentType": "PASSPORT", "surname": "..." },
  "credits": 1,
  "latencyMs": 842,
  "stored": null
}

4. Check your balance

curl https://api-ocr.vanguardinitiative.com/v1/account/balance \
  -H "authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

That’s it. From here, explore Speech‑to‑Text, Chat, or the full API Reference.