Technical

API (Application Programming Interface)

A set of protocols and tools that allow software applications to communicate with AI services programmatically, enabling integration of AI capabilities into products.

Explained at five levels

Level 1

A special door that lets different computer programs talk to each other and share information.

Level 2

A way for apps and websites to connect to AI services — like how a weather app gets data from a weather service. Developers use APIs to build things with AI.

Level 3

A set of protocols and tools that allow software applications to communicate with AI services programmatically, enabling integration of AI capabilities into products.

Level 4

A structured interface exposing AI model capabilities to external applications via HTTP endpoints, typically offering text completion, embeddings, and function calling with authentication, rate limiting, and usage-based pricing.

Level 5

A RESTful or gRPC service layer abstracting model inference behind versioned endpoints — supporting streaming completions, tool-use schemas, structured output grammars, and batched async processing with SLA guarantees.

Definitions are educational summaries. Terminology can vary by source and context.

Sources