REST API v1

Stable JSON over HTTPS. Reads are public and cached; writes need a Bearer API key.

Base URL https://3dassets.dev/api/v1. OpenAPI: /api/v1/openapi.json. Errors always look like { "error": { "code", "message", "details?" } }.

Read

No key, no account, no headers. Every route in this section answers an anonymous request, and does so on the same rate limits an account gets.

# search
curl "https://3dassets.dev/api/v1/assets?q=bench&category=props&theme=fantasy&style=low-poly&sort=popular"

# one asset (includes cdnUrl, downloadUrl, license.attributionText, stats, usage snippets)
curl "https://3dassets.dev/api/v1/assets/park-bench"

# same thing as Markdown
curl "https://3dassets.dev/assets/park-bench.md"

# taxonomy
curl "https://3dassets.dev/api/v1/categories"   # also /tags /licenses /packs

Filters on GET /assets: q, category, tag, theme, style, contributor, featured=true, sort=relevance|newest|popular|title (best match when there is a q, newest otherwise), page, limit (≤100).

Accounts

# 1. create (a 6-digit code is emailed)
curl -X POST https://3dassets.dev/api/v1/accounts -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"email":"[email protected]","name":"Ada","username":"ada","source":"api"}'

# 2. verify → API key (shown once)
curl -X POST https://3dassets.dev/api/v1/accounts/verify -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"email":"[email protected]","code":"123456"}'

# 3. check
curl https://3dassets.dev/api/v1/me -H 'Authorization: Bearer <apiKey>'

Accounts have no passwords

Signing up needs a username and an email, nothing else. Everything after that is a six-digit code we email, so there is never a credential for a user to paste into an agent session.

• POST /accounts {username, email} creates the account and emails a code.
• POST /accounts/verify {email, code} returns the API key, shown once, and signs the browser in.
• To sign in later: POST /accounts/login-code {email} emails a fresh code, then POST /accounts/session {email, code} sets the session cookie. Codes last 10 minutes and burn after five wrong guesses.
• PATCH /me {name} sets the display name shown on your assets; it starts as your username.

/accounts/login-code answers the same 200 whether or not the address has an account, so it cannot be used to discover who is registered.

Submit an asset

Two routes to the same place. Both end in processing (validation, re-encoding) and then a human review. Poll GET /assets/{slug} with your key to watch status move through processing → pending → published (or failed / rejected with a reason).

CC0 1.0 Universal is applied automatically. Set attestation: true only after the contributor accepts the irrevocable CC0 dedication and confirms their publishing rights. No licence or tags are needed in the request. If supplied, license must be cc0-1.0; other values receive a validation error. Missing or false acceptance is rejected. An API key alone does not grant permission to dedicate a model.

From a URL (simplest)

curl -X POST https://3dassets.dev/api/v1/assets/from-url -H 'Authorization: Bearer <apiKey>' -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{
  "url": "https://example.com/models/bench.glb",
  "title": "Park bench",
  "summary": "Low-poly wooden park bench, 1.8 m wide, PBR textures.",
  "category": "props",
  "attestation": true
}'

Direct upload

# presign
curl -X POST https://3dassets.dev/api/v1/uploads/presign -H 'Authorization: Bearer <apiKey>' -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"filename":"bench.glb","contentLength":1234567,"withPreview":false}'
# → { upload: { url, key, method: "PUT", headers } }

# upload the bytes straight to storage
curl -X PUT "<upload.url>" -H 'content-type: model/gltf-binary' --data-binary @bench.glb

# create the asset
curl -X POST https://3dassets.dev/api/v1/assets -H 'Authorization: Bearer <apiKey>' -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"quarantineKey":"<upload.key>","title":"Park bench","summary":"…","category":"props","attestation":true}'

Edit or withdraw your own asset

PATCH /assets/{slug} changes the metadata of an asset you submitted: title, summary, description, category, tags, sourceUrl, aiGenerated, aiModel. The uploaded GLB is immutable: to change the model itself, submit a new asset.

• 200: the asset was not published, so the change is already applied.
• 202: the asset is live, so the change is queued for review and the response carries pendingEdit with the fields that differ. The published version keeps serving, unchanged, until a human approves it. Send another PATCH to revise the queued version, or DELETE /assets/{slug}/edit to withdraw it and keep what is live.

GET /me/assets reports pendingEdit for anything you have waiting. DELETE /assets/{slug} withdraws the asset itself, permanently. Someone else’s asset answers 404 to all of these.

curl -X PATCH https://3dassets.dev/api/v1/assets/park-bench -H 'Authorization: Bearer <apiKey>' -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"summary":"Low-poly wooden park bench, 1.8 m wide, 2k PBR textures."}'

Rules every file must pass

• Binary glTF 2.0 (.glb), ≤ 25 MB, self-contained, with no external URIs for buffers or images.
• ≤ 1,000,000 triangles, ≤ 32 textures at ≤ 4096², ≤ 64 materials.
• Draco / meshopt inputs are accepted and decoded; KTX2/Basis textures and specular-glossiness materials are not (yet).
• Passes the Khronos glTF validator with zero errors.

Rejections come back with a machine-readable code (EXTERNAL_URI, LIMIT_EXCEEDED, VALIDATION_FAILED, …) and a human sentence you can show as-is.

Rate limits

Everything here is free, and the limits are set so that ordinary work never meets them: they exist so one caller cannot overload the site, not to ration it. Requests are counted in fixed windows against your API key, or against your IP address when you send none. The allowance is the same either way: a key authenticates your writes and gives you your own counter, it does not buy extra headroom.

Account calls are always counted per IP address. Reads and downloads answer with RateLimit-Limit, RateLimit-Remaining and RateLimit-Reset (seconds); every 429 carries those plus Retry-After and the usual error body:

{ "error": { "code": "RATE_LIMITED", "message": "Rate limit exceeded for downloads (…). Retry in 42 seconds.",
  "details": { "bucket": "download", "retryAfterSeconds": 42, "limit": 30, "window": "minute" } } }

• Wait for Retry-After before retrying. Do not retry in a tight loop, and do not spread one job over several keys or IPs.
• Fetching a whole pack is fine: a full pack manifest and its files fit inside the download window with room to spare.
• Use cdnUrl in code and downloadUrl for human download buttons. CDN URLs are immutable and cacheable: fetch a model once and keep it, rather than re-fetching it per build.
• Publishing runs a human review, so submission limits are deliberately low. They are not a queue to work around.
• Anything that sends email (sign-up, /accounts/login-code, /accounts/resend) is counted separately and far more tightly than checking a code, and there are further caps per recipient address and across the site as a whole. Ask for one code and wait for it; retrying in a loop only burns the allowance of the person you are helping.
• The CDN sits behind Cloudflare and applies its own abuse protection independently of these numbers.
• Need more for a legitimate project (a mirror, a research dataset, a tool)? Ask on the contact page. That is cheaper for us than serving a scraper.

Other

• GET /me/assets: your submissions with reasons for failures/rejections.
• POST /packs/submissions with title, summary and the assets slugs of your own uploads: propose a pack. Reviewed as a whole; approval publishes any members still pending and creates the pack page. GET /me/packs tracks proposals, and PATCH / DELETE /packs/submissions/{id} edit or withdraw one while it is open.
• GET /download/{slug} (not under /api): a counted 302 to the CDN; use it for human download buttons, use cdnUrl in code.

AI model attribution

Set aiGenerated: true if AI helped create geometry, generating code or textures, and optionally include aiModel (up to 160 characters). Use GET /api/v1/ai-models?q=... or MCP list_ai_models for OpenRouter suggestions refreshed hourly. Custom model and 3D-tool names are accepted. Leave unknown models unspecified; never guess. Using an agent only to upload does not count as AI creation.

The asset info panel, JSON and Markdown show this as contributor-reported attribution. A model catalogue outage does not block uploading. Switching AI use off clears the model name.