Get Started with GLKB

Make your first API call with the GLKB API.

Prerequisites

You will need a GLKB account. If you don't have one yet, sign up here.

Get your API keys

Store it as an environment variable.

bash

export GLKB_API_KEY="your-api-key-here"

Your first call

The example below runs the GLKB agent across five cancer genes and asks for a two-sentence literature summary with citations. This uses the requests library. Install it with pip install requests if you don't have it.

python

import json
import os
import requests

BASE_URL = "https://api.glkb.dev"  # DEV: replace with production base URL
API_KEY = os.environ["GLKB_API_KEY"]

ITEMS = ["TP53", "KRAS", "BRCA1", "EGFR", "MYC"]
PROMPT = "In 2 sentences, what is the role of {item} in cancer? Give up to 2 PMIDs."

with requests.post(
    f"{BASE_URL}/apps/glkb/users/me/batch",  # DEV: confirm URL structure
    headers={
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}",  # DEV: confirm header name/format
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    json={
        "items": ITEMS,
        "prompt_template": PROMPT,
        "concurrency": 5,
    },
    stream=True,
    timeout=300,
) as response:
    response.raise_for_status()
    for line in response.iter_lines():
        if line and line.startswith(b"data:"):
            event = json.loads(line[5:])
            if event.get("status") == "done":
                print(f"{event['item']}: {event['response']}")
            elif event.get("status") == "complete":
                print(f"Done - {event['succeeded']}/{event['total']} succeeded")

The API responds as a stream. Results arrive one at a time as each gene finishes, rather than all at once at the end. Each result is a JSON event on a data line with three fields you'll use in every workflow:

Field	Description
`item`	The gene (or whatever you passed in)
`response`	The agent's cited answer
`status`	`done` per result, `complete` when the whole batch finishes

You should see output like this appearing gene by gene:

text

KRAS: KRAS is one of the most commonly mutated oncogenes in human cancer, driving proliferation through constitutive RAS-MAPK signaling [PMID 29695864]. Activating mutations at codon 12 are found in ~30% of all cancers [PMID 27258034].

TP53: TP53 encodes a tumor suppressor that is mutated in over 50% of human cancers, where its loss abrogates cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in response to DNA damage [PMID 28802649].

Done - 5/5 succeeded