Quickstart | Smallest AI Docs

Step 1: Get Your API Key

In the Smallest AI Console, go to Settings -> API Keys and click Create API Key.

API Keys settings page with Create API Key button highlighted

Create New API Key dialog with name field

Copy the key and export it:

$ export SMALLEST_API_KEY="your-api-key-here"

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Step 2: Transcribe Audio

Here’s the sample audio we’ll transcribe:

Paste this cURL — no install required:

$ curl -X POST "https://api.smallest.ai/waves/v1/pulse/get_text?language=en" \
>   -H "Authorization: Bearer $SMALLEST_API_KEY" \
>   -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
>   -d '{"url": "https://github.com/smallest-inc/cookbook/raw/main/speech-to-text/getting-started/samples/audio.wav"}'

You’ll get back:

1 {
2   "transcription": "This is a sample audio file for testing speech to text transcription with the Pulse API."
3 }

Step 3: Build It Into Your App

$ curl -X POST "https://api.smallest.ai/waves/v1/pulse/get_text?language=en" \
>   -H "Authorization: Bearer $SMALLEST_API_KEY" \
>   -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
>   -d '{"url":"https://github.com/smallest-inc/cookbook/raw/main/speech-to-text/getting-started/samples/audio.wav"}'

Set language explicitly to match the audio for the best accuracy (en, hi, es, etc.). Use multi-eu for unknown European-language audio or multi for full multilingual auto-detection. Omitting language routes to multi-eu and can mis-detect on non-European audio.

Full runnable source files: Python | JavaScript | cURL