Quickstart

Make your first Merki request in under five minutes.

Quick path

Create an account and top up credits. See Credits.
Issue an API key and export it: export MERKI_API_KEY=<key>.
Send a chat completion:

curl https://api.merki.dev/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MERKI_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "Qwen3-32B",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello from Merki"}]
  }'

Expected result: a 200 response with a completion, and your credit balance drawn down at the model catalog rate. See Usage and metering.

Details

Topic	Decision
Base URL	`https://api.merki.dev/v1` (OpenAI compatible). Anthropic shape: `https://api.merki.dev/v1/messages`.
Auth	`Authorization: Bearer <key>`. See Authentication.
Model names	Use the `Model` column of the catalog, for example `Qwen3-32B`, `Kimi-K2`, `Llama-4-Scout`.
Anthropic clients	Point the SDK at `https://api.merki.dev/v1/messages` with a Merki key.

Checklist

[ ] Key is in an environment variable, not in source.
[ ] You can read your balance and this request in usage. See Usage.
[ ] Errors return a JSON shape you can handle. See Errors.

Next step

Pick a model for your workload: Models.