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Quick Start Guide

This page does two things: it gets you an API key, and then it points you at the fastest way to build something with it.

Getting the key takes a few minutes. Everything after that — inviting teammates, two-factor authentication, billing — can wait until you need it, and lives in Account Administration.

If you have never worked with an API before, read New to APIs? first.

Accounts, organizations, and API keys all come from the Toolpath API Portal. The Engine API itself has no account or key management endpoints, so every step up to your key happens in Portal.

Create an account​

Already have a Toolpath subscription? Sign up with the same email you use for the Toolpath application at app.toolpath.com. Check this before you start: signing up always creates a new organization, so a different address leaves you with two unconnected accounts rather than API access attached to the subscription you already have.

  1. Go to portal.toolpath.com/signup.
  2. Fill in Company, First Name, Last Name, Email, and Password, or use Continue with Google.
  3. Click Create Account.

Creating the account signs you in. The Google path does not ask for a company name — the organization is named after you, and an admin can rename it later on the Team page.

Create an API key​

Go to portal.toolpath.com/keys and click Create API Key. A key is created with an Access grid: read and write, in each of the Core, DFM, and Quoting APIs. Every box is ticked by default, and you can change it later. For a script that uploads and analyzes parts, keep core write and DFM write. For a browser that only shows results, untick every write box. See What a key may do.

Allowed browser origins is optional. It only applies to keys used by code running in a web browser — one origin per line. For a script, a server, or anything else that is not a browser, leave it empty.

The complete key is shown once, when it is created. Copy it then — Portal cannot show it again. Keys begin with tp_; the fragment shown in the listing afterwards is an identifier and cannot be used to authenticate.

Paste it straight into a password manager. The point is that the key lands somewhere encrypted the moment you copy it, rather than in a note app, a text file, or an email to yourself. If teammates need the same key, share it through the password manager's shared vault rather than over chat or email.

That is where the key is kept. It is not where your code should read it from — see Authentication for that.

To replace a key you have lost or want to rotate, use Regenerate key in its row menu. That issues a new secret on the same key and shows it once, in the same way; the old secret stops working. Revoke key in the same menu ends a key's access for good.

Only organization admins can create, regenerate, or edit the origins of a key. Any member can revoke one.

Now put the key to work​

You have a key. Here are three ways to get to something working, in rough order of how much code you want to write. Any of them is a reasonable place to start, and you can stop after the first one if all you want is to see what the API does.

Working with a coding agent? Give it this site first.

Whichever path you take, if you are using an AI coding agent — Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, or similar — the most useful thing you can do is point it at this documentation site, developers.toolpath.com, before you ask it for anything. An agent working from memory will invent endpoints that do not exist. An agent that has read these guides and the API reference will write code against the real API.

Open a conversation with something like:

Read the Toolpath Engine API documentation at https://developers.toolpath.com, including the API reference. I want to build against it.

Then ask it to confirm it worked: "Which operations does the API expose?" If it cannot tell you, it did not read the site — see New to APIs? for other ways to hand the reference over.

1. Try it in the browser, without writing code​

dfm.toolpath.com is Toolpath's reference implementation: a complete, working application built on the Engine API. Open it, run one of your own CAD files through it, and you will have watched the entire flow — upload, analysis, results — without writing a line of code.

This is the single fastest way to understand what the API actually does. It shows you the order the calls happen in, what the responses really contain, and how an application works with them.

It is also the natural first step into the next section. The application you are using is Part Viewer, and its full source is in the open-source repository below — so once you have seen what it does, you can run that same application on your own machine and start changing it. When you get to that point, hand your coding agent this site, developers.toolpath.com, so it works from the real API rather than from guesswork.

This walkthrough shows what it does:

2. Start from working code, using a coding agent​

github.com/toolpath/ui-packages is the open-source Toolpath repository. It contains the official TypeScript and Python SDKs, runnable examples for both, and the source of Part Viewer — the very application running at dfm.toolpath.com. Whatever you just did in the browser, you can now run locally with your own key and adapt.

Starting here means you are not building from a blank page. The upload, the analysis, and the results screens already work; your job is to change them into what you need.

You do not have to be a programmer to build on it. A coding agent — Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, or similar — does well here, because the repository gives it a real, working API integration to copy from. Give it two things before you start: this repository, and this documentation site, developers.toolpath.com. The repository shows it how Toolpath builds against the API; the site tells it what every operation, field, and response actually is.

Clone the repository and open the folder in your agent:

git clone https://github.com/toolpath/ui-packages.git
cd ui-packages

Then start with a prompt along these lines:

Read the README and the existing Engine API integration in this repository, and read the Toolpath Engine API documentation at https://developers.toolpath.com. Using this codebase, help me [describe what you want to build]. Work on a new Git branch, keep my API key out of the repository, and explain how to run and test the change.

Keep your API key in the local environment file the repository documents — never in source code, in a commit, or pasted into a chat with an AI assistant.

New to APIs? goes further on this, including how to fork the repository so you have your own copy, and how to hand the API specification to an assistant that is not working inside a folder on your computer.

3. Write your first request yourself​

If you would rather work directly against the API, these are the next four pages, in order. They are also the pages worth handing to a coding agent if you are writing the code with help — together they are the whole contract:

  1. Authentication — attach your key to a request and confirm it works.
  2. SDK installation — install the TypeScript or Python SDK.
  3. SDK usage examples — the full create, upload, and process walkthrough, including both ways of waiting for an analysis to finish.
  4. API reference — every operation, field, and response.

The machine-readable version of all of it is the OpenAPI document at api.toolpath.com/v1/openapi.json. It is public, needs no key, and is small enough for any current assistant to read in full.