Site API Guide

This section covers everything you need to start building against the Civitai site API: generating a token, making your first request, paginating results, handling errors, and working with AIR identifiers. It is also where the civitai CLI is documented.

The REST API

• Getting started — create a token and make your first call.
• Authentication — how bearer tokens work and when they're required.
• Pagination — page vs. cursor and the 1000-offset cap.
• Errors — response shape and HTTP status codes.
• AIR identifiers — the canonical URN format for Civitai resources.

For a per-endpoint breakdown (parameters, response fields, examples), see the Reference.

The civitai CLI

The same binary reads these endpoints, downloads model files, and runs generations on your own account.

• CLI — install it, then the read and download commands.
• CLI credentials and scopes — OAuth vs a personal API key, and why a default browser login cannot spend Buzz.
• Generating images from the CLI — 🔴 spends real Buzz. The money contract, --dry-run, --max-cost, waiting and downloading.
• Choosing a model — --checkpoint vs --ecosystem, silent model substitution, and image-to-image.
• Raw generation graphs — --print-input / --input, and the only route to a seed.
• Tracking and cancelling generations — finding a job, reading what failed, and what cancelling does to a charge.
• Scripting the CLI with --json — the output guarantees beyond the read endpoints.
• CLI terminal output — the colour precedence, and what the human renderers guarantee about text a stranger uploaded.
• CLI troubleshooting — look the error message up here.

To author and ship a Civitai App with the same binary, see the Apps guide.