Guides¶

Each guide answers one task, end to end. They are grouped by the job you have, not by the endpoint you would call. One endpoint does the recognition, and almost every question is about what to send it and what to do with the answer.

Every request example on these pages is executed against the API on every commit. These are the curl, JavaScript and Python tabs, and they use the public sandbox key that is printed in them. An example that stopped working would fail the build before it reached you. The longer programs in the two integration guides are not run by the build. They were run by hand against the API when they were written.

Read a document¶

• Recognize a passport – the request, the options, the holder and document blocks, and the machine-readable zone. The ID-card layouts are here too.
• Recognize an ID card – the two-sided case against an endpoint that takes one image per call.
• Recognize a driver licence – the barcode and the visual zone, for the issuers that print no machine-readable zone at all.

Build it into an app¶

• Read a passport in an Ionic app – take the photo with Capacitor and show the fields. The key stays on your own server, never on the phone.
• Crop a document with OpenCV – find the document's outline in Python, straighten it, then send it.

Read the answer¶

• Check an MRZ – re-run the check digits yourself from the zone as published.
• Work with result images – the crops, their sizes and what they are not.
• Handle non-Latin scripts – which values are transliterated, and how to ask for both spellings.

Keep an integration up¶

• Handle errors – branch on the code, and the table of what to do with each of the 21 of them.
• Retry safely with idempotency – a retry that cannot charge twice.
• Get results without webhooks – the call is synchronous, so there is nothing to register.

Run the account¶

• Control history retention – how long a result stays readable, and how to keep nothing at all.
• Rotate API keys – issue, swap and revoke without a gap in service.
• Top up with crypto – fund the balance.
• Track usage and spend – what the counters cover and when they reset.
• Use the MCP server – give an assistant the recognition tools.
• Use the AI SDK – give a model you build with the AI SDK the recognition tools as a package.

If you are here before your first call, start with your first recognition instead. If you want the exact contract rather than a task, go to the reference.