Frustum Desk / API
Get a token

Driving Frustum 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
planTurn a shot description into a camerabrief, knownSummary, The Sheet, The Numbers, Reasoning, Next Step
auditWhat this camera can see, resolve, and is drawing for nothingsheet, worrySummary, Verdict, Findings, Corrected Sheet, Next Step
frameOne vertical angle, many horizontalssheetSummary, Every Canvas, What Fits Where, The Camera Distance, Next Step
depthnear, far, and what cannot be separatedsheetSummary, The Depth Ladder, What Cannot Be Separated, The Second Frustum, Next Step
decideDecide what changes: a number, the scene, or the shotsheet, fixedSummary, A Number Fixes, Only A Re-Author Fixes, Nothing Fixes, Next Step

Only task and the lane's own required fields are mandatory: sheet on audit, frame, depth and decide; brief on plan. Every field is a string - there are no number fields on this app. sheet is the scene sheet itself: a header of KEY: value lines, an OBJECTS: block and an optional LIGHTS: block.

fov is the VERTICAL angle - three.js's PerspectiveCamera(fov, aspect, near, far) takes one, and every renderer that resizes to its element recomputes aspect from the canvas on every resize. So there is no horizontal field of view to set; there is only the one the canvas gives you, and it is 2 × atan(tan(fov ÷ 2) × aspect). The vertical framing is identical on every canvas and the horizontal is not, which is why CANVAS takes a comma list.

near is the dial and far very nearly is not. The smallest separation a B-bit fixed-point depth buffer can resolve at view distance z is z² × (1/near − 1/far) ÷ (2^B − 1), and once far is much larger than near the second term is already negligible. Raising near ten-fold buys ten-fold precision at every distance; lowering far ten-fold buys about a hundredth of a percent. State near even when nothing else is known - it is assumed 0.1, and it decides every precision figure in the answer.

DEPTH is one of 16, 24, 32 or log. The first three are fixed-point; log is three.js's logarithmicDepthBuffer, which makes the error linear in distance rather than quadratic - far-field precision improves enormously, near-field precision gets worse, and it costs a per-fragment depth write. It is a trade, not a fix.

An object is <name> <shape> <size> at=x,y,z with shape one of box, plane, sphere or cylinder, sized WxHxD, WxH, R and RxH respectively. feature= names the smallest detail that has to survive; without it the object's own smallest dimension is used. Frustum culling tests the object's circumscribed bounding sphere, not the object, so the answer reports both what is submitted and what is actually visible.

A light with a map= and a span= is a SECOND FRUSTUM. A directional light's shadow camera is orthographic, so its texel density is exactly mapSize ÷ span and is uniform - which means halving the span is worth exactly as much as doubling the map and costs a quarter of the memory. It has its own near and far and obeys the same depth arithmetic, which is what shadow acne actually is.

Anything the reader cannot place is listed as a problem rather than skipped, and so is an object named twice. An object that quietly vanished would be a smaller scene than the one described, and every count and extent in the answer too generous.

An angle is reported in degrees to one place, a distance in world units, a depth step in the smallest readable unit, a ratio as , and a pixel count against the DRAWING BUFFER rather than the CSS size. The engine works in angles, distances and bit depths: it has not created a WebGL context, rendered a frame, or measured a GPU.

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 audit, frame and depth lanes rather than shorten them - a findings table, a corrected sheet, or a row per object with its depth step and culling verdict, 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": "audit",
  "sheet": "<CANVAS, DPR, CAMERA, DEPTH and OBJECTS/LIGHTS blocks; the grammar is in /llms.txt>",
  "worry": "it graded fine last time and this one will not come clean",
  "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": "audit",
  "sheet": "<CANVAS, DPR, CAMERA, DEPTH and OBJECTS/LIGHTS blocks; the grammar is in /llms.txt>",
  "worry": "it graded fine last time and this one will not come clean",
  "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": "audit",
  "sheet": "<CANVAS, DPR, CAMERA, DEPTH and OBJECTS/LIGHTS blocks; the grammar is in /llms.txt>",
  "worry": "it graded fine last time and this one will not come clean",
  "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