Data API

A Data Verb reads the market and returns a reading. A Software Verb changes your records and emits an Event.

The overview, in a founder's words: Data: every reading names when, how and what it cost.

A first pass costs about $3Copy Anchor Link

Size the market, list the companies that fit with the quote that shows why, find the person at each and check their address, measure 500 search terms, read 30 results pages, ask four answer engines 20 buying questions, and diff three rivals’ links. Each line is priced from its call’s own record, so the total moves when a price does. One live run found and checked 50 heads of operations at US property managers for 29¢.

Each call answers one question a founder asksCopy Anchor Link

One call returns one shape, so each has one price unit, one schema and one MCP tool an agent can call without reading the docs twice. The success rate is the measured share of calls that returned an answer, with its sample; a documented Workflow’s is the product of its steps’.

The word you searched for is one of these callsCopy Anchor Link

Every data call keeps the same contractCopy Anchor Link

Every row says where it came from. Each row carries observedAt, method (sampled, estimated or reported) and, where it has them, venue and locale. The Observed type is the same on every call.

A blank is unknown, never zero. Long-tail terms often have no volume reading; that reads searches: null. A 0 means the source measured zero.

You pay per result returned. Never per row asked for, and never a one-row minimum on an empty answer. Counting is free. A miss is free wherever a route allows it: an email or phone find that finds nothing, and a check that ends catch-all or unknown.

Every call has a cap. maxCost defaults per call. A call that would pass it is refused before it spends, or stops early and returns what it has. Every response carries cost: what it spent, the most it could have, the units billed and the misses.

Falling back is the platform’s job. On a 429, a 5xx or a timeout the next route answers, and you pay for one. A 4xx is never retried elsewhere: the input is wrong, so the call says so.

A filter is applied or listed. A filter no route can apply comes back in ignored, never silently dropped. Send strict: true to be refused instead, at $0. Filter coverage shows how often each one applies.

Readings are reused. A reading younger than maxAge returns at $0. Market readings (volume, results pages, authority, links) are shared across startups for the same subject and locale; readings about people never are.

Every call emits one Event. Its data holds the rows, so a Trigger can fire on it and Metric.query can read it back. In try mode the read runs and returns real rows, and nothing is saved or billed.

{
  "mode": "try",
  "stored": false,
  "api": "https://api.sb/leaseline.app",
  "action": { "$id": "https://api.sb/leaseline.app/actions/action_KO1jlJbtig", "operation": "Organization.find", "status": "done" },
  "organizations": [ "…the call's own value, documented on its page" ],
  "links": { "next": "https://api.sb/leaseline.app/organizations/find?after=org_9Qe2" }
}

Ten calls a second per key, and an array counts as oneCopy Anchor Link

When a call says no, it names the fix and the next callCopy Anchor Link

Every refusal is the hub’s RFC 9457 problem, served as application/problem+json: type, title, status, detail, fix, next (the call that clears it, with its input) and instance. Nothing is spent on a refusal. A miss is not a refusal: it returns 200 with the field null.

{
  "type": "https://startupbuilder.dev/errors/max-cost",
  "title": "The call would spend more than its cap",
  "status": 422,
  "detail": "100 rows from a sentence cost about $0.20; maxCost is $0.05.",
  "fix": "Lower limit, or raise maxCost to the price the detail quotes.",
  "next": { "verb": "Organization.find", "input": { "question": "US property managers with 20 to 400 units who still track rent in spreadsheets", "limit": 25, "maxCost": 0.05 } },
  "instance": "https://api.sb/leaseline.app/actions/action_Pq7wD2"
}

Test values answer the same way every time, for freeCopy Anchor Link

A sk_test_ key answers these subjects the same way on every call, at $0, so an agent’s branches can be tested before a live key spends anything. Each call’s page repeats its own rows under Example.

Read what you measured with one queryCopy Anchor Link

Answer share and rank curves are not calls of their own. They are Metric.query over the Events these calls emit: a week of Keyword.asked split by site is your answer share on each engine, and a month of Keyword.searched for one term is its rank curve.

import { $ } from 'startup-builder'

const share = await $.Metric.query({ event: 'Keyword.asked', shape: 'trend', breakdown: 'venue', window: '8w' })

The calls compose into Workflows, agent tasks and ServicesCopy Anchor Link

Each Workflow, agent task and Service names its steps as these calls, so its price is the sum of the prices printed here. The accounts your agents act through are Integrations, and the shared Types say what every field means.