> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.creatoraudit.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Set up API access

> Get an API key, authenticate, and start consuming the CreatorAudit API from your code

The CreatorAudit API serves everything in the dashboard over REST, so you can pull analytics into your own tools, pipelines, and agents. This section gets you consuming it; for the full endpoint catalog and an interactive playground, see the [API reference](/api-reference/introduction).

## Prerequisites

* A CreatorAudit account. [Sign up](https://app.creatoraudit.com/sign-up) if you don't have one.
* An API key, which you'll create below.

## 1. Create an API key

Open the [API keys](https://app.creatoraudit.com/app/api-keys) page in the dashboard, create a key, and copy it — it's shown only once. A key is scoped to your organization; keep it secret and server-side.

## 2. Authenticate

Send the key as a bearer token on every request, and confirm it with `whoami`:

```bash theme={null}
curl https://api.creatoraudit.com/v2/whoami \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
```

`whoami` echoes the organization your key belongs to.

## 3. Read some data

```bash theme={null}
curl "https://api.creatoraudit.com/v2/accounts?limit=20" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
```

Responses are JSON envelopes — `{ data, pagination }` for collections and `{ data }` for a single resource.

## Then

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Code examples" icon="code" href="/examples/curl">
    Runnable cURL, Python, and TypeScript clients.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Conventions" icon="book" href="/api-reference/authentication">
    Auth, pagination, filtering, errors, rate limits, and versioning.
  </Card>

  <Card title="API reference" icon="terminal" href="/api-reference/introduction">
    Every endpoint with a live playground.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Build with agents" icon="robot" href="/agents/overview">
    Turn the API into tools an AI agent can call.
  </Card>
</Columns>