Skip to main content
In this quickstart, you’ll route your first AI request through Lava’s AI Gateway to track usage and costs. Routing through Lava is just a REST POST request — you swap the base URL and auth header, and everything else stays the same.
Building with an AI agent? See the Agents guide for how to do this programmatically from code.
1

Get Your Secret Key

Go to Developers > Secrets in your dashboard and copy your secret key (aks_live_...).
export LAVA_SECRET_KEY=aks_live_your_key_here
2

Make Your First Request

Use your secret key in the Authorization header. The request body stays unchanged from the provider’s API.
curl -X POST 'https://api.lava.so/v1/forward?u=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.openai.com%2Fv1%2Fchat%2Fcompletions' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LAVA_SECRET_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-4o-mini",
    "messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Say hello in one sentence." }]
  }'
3

Check the Dashboard

Go to Analytics > Requests in your dashboard. Find your request by timestamp or request ID to see token counts, cost breakdown, model, and provider — all captured automatically.See the Forward Proxy guide for multi-provider examples, streaming, error handling, and advanced configuration.

What’s Next?

Charge Your First Customer

Set up pricing and checkout to monetize your AI service

How Lava Works

Understand Lava’s architecture, gateway routing, and key concepts

Troubleshooting

Go to Gateway > Secrets. If the section is missing, verify you’re logged into a merchant account (not a wallet-only account).
Verify you included the Bearer prefix in the Authorization header and that your secret key matches the one in your dashboard. See the Forward Proxy troubleshooting for more details.
Your Lava wallet needs funds. Go to Wallet > Billing to add a payment method.
Using your secret key directly is the simplest way to get started — costs are charged to your merchant wallet. When you need to bill customers, you’ll use a forward token instead: a base64-encoded JSON that bundles your secret key with a customer_id and meter_slug. See the Forward Proxy guide and SDK reference for details.