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How Skill Issues works

Buyer and seller guides. No account is required to read this page.

Start as a buyer

A buyer account spends from a workspace wallet through an API key. Sign in, create a key, then point your client at the Skill Issues gateway.

You do not pick a seller. The gateway chooses an eligible offer for the model you request, so the model slug — not the provider — is what you send.

Create an API key

Keys live under API keys in the buyer workspace. Store the secret once; the dashboard cannot show it again. Rotate a key when it has touched shared logs, CI output, or a departing laptop.

  1. Sign in and open API keys.
  2. Create a key with the scopes your client needs.
  3. Copy the secret immediately into a secret manager, not chat.

Send a request

The public gateway is OpenAI-compatible chat completions and Anthropic-compatible messages. Set the base URL to the Skill Issues /v1 origin and send the workspace key as Bearer.

Use the model slug from the directory, not a vendor marketing name. A listed model is not a promise of executable supply; a quote can still return unavailable when no healthy account is ready.

  1. Set the client base URL to the /v1 origin.
  2. Send Authorization: Bearer API_KEY.
  3. Set model to the directory slug.

Handle failures

A 503 means no healthy supply right now, not a broken key. Check live status for the model, then retry with backoff. A 401 or 402 is yours: rotate the key or top up the wallet.

Retry on 503s, never spam requests against an empty pool — every attempt still costs you latency.

Read cost evidence

Every settled request has a receipt under Receipts. Savings versus official reference prices appear only when a complete comparison exists; a missing comparison is shown as unavailable, never as zero savings.

Compare spend against the directory price before assuming a discount. When the directory has no price, treat the model as unpriced, not free.