Errors | Sighting.ai docs

API access is not on sale yet.

The endpoint is live and these docs describe it accurately. Access belongs to the Pro plan, which we have not opened for purchase — so a key cannot be issued today, and these pages are here to be read rather than acted on. Free accounts have no API access, and requests from one are refused with a 403. Nothing here is a waiting list; there is simply nothing to join yet.

The error envelope

Errors come back as { "error": { "type", "message" } }:

Error response

{
  "error": {
    "type": "invalid_request_error",
    "message": "`modality` must be one of: text, code, image, video"
  }
}

Status codes

Status	Type	When
`400`	`invalid_request_error`	Malformed JSON or missing/invalid fields.
`401`	`authentication_error`	Missing or invalid bearer key.
`403`	`permission_error`	The key is valid but lacks the scope the endpoint requires. The message names the missing scope — detection needs `detect:write`.
`402`	`quota_exceeded`	The account has spent its monthly detection quota. The cap is measured per account, not per key, so minting a second key does not raise it.
`413`	`invalid_request_error`	The request is too large: `text` exceeds 200,000 characters, `mediaRef` exceeds 25 MB of decoded media, or the request body exceeds that plus a small envelope. An oversize body is refused from the `Content-Length` header before it is read.
`429`	`rate_limit_error`	Too many requests from this key. The limit is per key, per minute — `60` unless the key sets its own `rate_limit_per_min`. The response carries a `Retry-After` header in seconds.
`500`	`api_error`	Something broke on our side. Nothing is billed and no verdict is stored — retry, and if it persists, send us the response.
`503`	`service_unavailable`	The engine for that modality could not be reached. Image and video run on a separate hosted inference service, so this is what you get when that service is down or misconfigured — never a guessed verdict.

Retries

429, 500 and 503 are the statuses worth retrying — everything else describes something about the request that will not change on a second attempt.

On 429, wait for the number of seconds in the Retry-After header before trying again. On 500 and 503, back off exponentially rather than retrying immediately.