Overview

auth.md provides a standardized path for agents to discover Encrata’s API-key authentication and available endpoints. At its core, auth.md is a small Markdown file hosted at https://developer.encrata.com/auth.md. The file describes how agents get and use an API key, how to verify it, and how to handle errors and rate limits. Because Markdown is plain text, the same file works as documentation for human integrators and as a discoverable runtime artifact for agents.

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How it works

An agent authenticates with Encrata via the API Key Flow:

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The contract

The auth.md file at developer.encrata.com/auth.md tells agents everything they need to authenticate:

1. How to get an API key - ask the user to create one in the dashboard and paste it
2. How to authenticate - send the key as a Bearer token on every request
3. How to verify the key - call the free GET /api/account/credits endpoint
4. Key facts - scope, expiry, credit caps, and revocation
5. Error handling - status codes, result.code values, rate limits, and retry behavior

For endpoints, the file points agents to the docs index and the API reference.

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Why auth.md?

An agent needs a small, reliable contract that identifies the supported host, credential format, and routes. auth.md solves this by making authentication machine-discoverable:

• User-approved access - the user creates the credential and gives it to the agent
• Self-describing - the file contains everything needed to authenticate, and links to the endpoint docs
• Standard format - plain Markdown that any agent can parse
• Stable location - hosted at one well-known URL that agents can fetch

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Integration guides