Motion Desk / API
Get a token

Driving Motion 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 motion brief into a portable animation sheetbrief, knownSummary, The Sheet, The Numbers, Reasoning, Next Step
portWhat this animation becomes in each runtime, and what does not survivesheet, worrySummary, Verdict, Findings, Corrected Sheet, Next Step
timeUnits, iteration counts and the frame gridsheetSummary, Every Duration Converted, The Iteration Counts, The Frame Grid, Next Step
curveWhat the nearest easing curve costs in each runtimesheetSummary, Every Curve Converted, What Has No Equivalent, What It Costs In Pixels, Next Step
deliverDecide what changes: the number, the fill, or the runtimesheet, fixedSummary, A Conversion Fixes, Only A Different Value Fixes, Nothing Fixes, Next Step

Only task and the lane's own required fields are mandatory: sheet on port, time, curve and deliver; brief on plan. Every field is a string - there are no number fields on this app. sheet is the animation sheet itself: a header of KEY: value lines and an ANIMATIONS: block.

DECLARED IN is the line that matters most. It says which of the five runtimes the numbers are written in - waapi, css, gsap, animejs or lottie - and every other column in the answer is what those numbers become. Getting it wrong makes every figure wrong in the same direction, so it is stated back on every answer; without it, waapi is assumed and the assumption is reported.

FPS is for the Lottie target and DISTANCE is for turning a curve deviation into pixels. A Lottie duration is a whole number of frames, so the rate decides what quantises; and a deviation of a given percentage is a different number of pixels on a 20 px move than on a 400 px one, which is why both are reported.

An ANIMATIONS line takes dur=, ease=, one of iterations=/repeat=/loop=, delay=, fill=, alternate, on= and props=. A time is 300ms, 1.2s, 9f for frames, or a bare number - read as MILLISECONDS, because three of the four unit-bearing runtimes are.

THE ITERATION FIELD NAME DECIDES WHAT THE NUMBER MEANS. iterations=3 is three plays; repeat=3 and loop=3 are four, because those two count ADDITIONAL cycles. Write the field you mean and the answer will say which it read. infinite, forever and -1 all mean forever.

An easing may be a CSS keyword (ease, ease-in, ease-out, ease-in-out), cubic-bezier(x1,y1,x2,y2), steps(n) or steps(n, start|end), GSAP's family.direction (power2.out, sine.inOut, elastic.out, …), anime.js's easeOutQuad spelling, or spring(mass, stiffness, damping, velocity). A bare family name is read as .out, which is what almost everybody means, and the answer says so.

Anything the reader cannot place is listed as a problem rather than skipped. A sheet whose animation lines were quietly swallowed would read as an empty sheet, and every figure in the answer would be a confident statement about nothing.

A DURATION is reported in the unit of the runtime the column is about, a deviation as a percentage of the travel to one place AND in pixels, an iteration value as the field and the number together (repeat: 2), and a frame count as a number of frames. The engine works in milliseconds and in normalised curve space: it has not run an animation and has not touched the DOM.

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 port, time and curve lanes rather than shorten them - a findings table, a corrected sheet, or a row per animation per runtime, 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": "port",
  "sheet": "<DECLARED IN, FPS, DISTANCE and an ANIMATIONS block with dur= and ease=; 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": "port",
  "sheet": "<DECLARED IN, FPS, DISTANCE and an ANIMATIONS block with dur= and ease=; 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": "port",
  "sheet": "<DECLARED IN, FPS, DISTANCE and an ANIMATIONS block with dur= and ease=; 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