FAQ And Questions

What are Grounding Points?  🔗

Grounding Points are consumed when your request results in a new uncached response.
We have a dedicated section at the Pricing page for all questions related to Pricing and Points.

How do I use the Grounding API?  🔗

First, to see a typical response, you might want to try with:

	curl -s "https://api.natlang.io/api/v1/ground?query=astronauts+in+space" | jq

We serve an OpenAPI json file to point your LLM system to. See also our Swagger UI

If you are writing code, be sure to check out our Documentation and Usage pages.

Once you have a minimal working integration, fill up an API Key with some Grounding Points to fetch new information when a cached response is unavailable.

How do I use NatLang Grounding API with Ollama?  🔗

One way to integrate with Ollama is to expose a Tool. See our ollama python integration examples here

How do I use NatLang Grounding API with open-webui?  🔗

Point to our OpenAPI.json file in your Open-WebUI Admin settings page under Tools section. See our open-webui setup walkthrough here

Can I use the Grounding API for free?  🔗

Yes. The grounding API can be used without any costs. Without points, you may frequently receive outdated results. When no result is found in our cache, an error will be returned if no Grounding Points are available to consume. More information is provided about Grounding Points on the Transfer page.

Rate limiting?  🔗

Yes, we rate-limit requests and point consumption (seperately). For grounding requests, we prevent consuming more than 1 point per second. If you sending require more frequent grounding requests, send us a message and we can make that happen.

Can I force a cached or uncached response?  🔗

You can add “&use_cache=false” parameter to your query to guarantee 1 token is consumed. Likewise, adding &use_cache=true forces a cached response, as if you were not using authentication.

Can an API Key be used to begin a Grounding Points transfer?  🔗

No. API Keys can only be used to access our Grounding API endpoints.

To access the Dashboard features, you must log in using your browser, not an API Key.

Can an API Key be used to create/delete/enable/disable other API Keys?  🔗

No. API Keys can only be used to access our Grounding API endpoints.

To access the Dashboard features, you must log in using your browser, not an API Key.

What can my API Key be used for?  🔗

API Keys can be used to consume points, avoid rate limiting, and access our protected endpoints. To access new uncached information, the Key must have at least 1 Grounding Point to consume.

What security features are provided to protect my account?  🔗

We recommend two-factor authentication, and require it for points transfers to other users.

The Billing and API Key Management Dashboard is not accessible via API_KEY requests.

We don’t store your query history,

How to maximize chance of free response?  🔗

To get a higher chance of hitting a cached response, use shorter queries.

How long is the cached response stored?  🔗

Most responses are stored indefinitely for now. If a query contains certain keywords, the cache time-to-live is modified.

These are called “Time-sensitive Keywords”. When using an API key with no points available it will not show an error, our API instead will return a potentially outdated result. Usually this is fine, unless Weather related.

Time-sensitive Keywords  🔗

Keywords that require information fresher than 4 hours:  🔗

Keywords that prefer information fresher than 24 hours:  🔗

Keywords that prefer information fresher than 2 months:  🔗

How does the API simplify the request queries?  🔗

The LLM should send simplified requests, as short as possible. We attempt to guide the AI towards this with the text in the OpenAPI specification.

Occasionally, more specific requests are sent. These are simplified by the Grounding API after analyzing for

Example: How many astronauts are in space right now?

The query is too long, contains unnecessary words. If we receive such a query, it is simplified to: how+many+astronauts+in+space

Note: In the above example, (even when the simplified query no longer contains the keyword), since Now was sent, it would break the cache and consume a point.

What is the long additional_instructions field in the Grounding API response?  🔗

We have found that LLMs have a serious tendency towards Bias relating to their training data. When real-world events conflict with their hardcoded knowledge base, sometimes they have a hard time accepting these facts. The additional_instructions field is given to (attempt to) force the LLM to accept the given response. See Usage for example python code that shows additional techniques that can be layered to “bust the bias”.

Where can I message the team?  🔗

Click here to send a message directly to the team.

Pricing information  🔗

See the Pricing page.