A living city.
An API to build with.

City aggregates anyone can read

These routes need no key and no sign-in. Each returns plain JSON without the API envelope, is cached at the edge, and can be read from any website (Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *). They carry aggregates only: no camera locations, imagery, tracks or model descriptions. Every figure has its unit and an as-of time; a section without data is null or a 503 with a state, never a zero.

Choose a route above. Requests go from your browser without credentials.

The response will appear here.

Rules the data follows

• Counts are average people or vehicles in view per camera, never totals: overlapping views can see the same person.
• Neighborhood figures need at least three counting cameras; other cameras count only toward the city. Possible incidents are counted citywide and per day.
• Use each payload's own times (counts.asOf, takenAt, window.end) for freshness, not the time you fetched it.
• Forecast bands are approximate and uncalibrated. Counts come from an object detector and are estimates, not ground truth.

curl --fail-with-body https://orchestra.money/api/public/pulse

const pulse = await fetch('https://orchestra.money/api/public/pulse', {credentials: 'omit'}).then(r => r.json());
console.log(pulse.counts?.city.people.perCamera ?? 'unavailable');

Schemas, parameters and cache policies for every route are in the OpenAPI contract under the Public data tag, and in the explorer below.

Your first live insight

1. Contact the operator. Ask for a machine key for your integration.
2. Store your key securely. Keep it in a server environment variable or device keychain. Use Google sign-in for this website.
3. Call the API. Every JSON data response includes data and request metadata.

export ORCHESTRA_API_KEY='your_approved_key'
curl --fail-with-body https://orchestra.money/api/v1/insights \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ORCHESTRA_API_KEY"

{
  "data": {
    "now": 1789257600000,
    "insights": [{
      "id": "scene-example", "cameraId": "CAM-01",
      "title": "Traffic moving through the intersection",
      "detail": "A sampled view shows vehicles and pedestrians.",
      "type": "scene", "priority": 0,
      "observedAt": 1789257580000, "expiresAt": 1789257700000
    }],
    "inference": { "location": "server", "state": "ready" },
    "refreshAfterMs": 10000
  },
  "meta": { "apiVersion": "1.1.0", "requestId": "…", "generatedAt": 1789257600000 }
}

Your workspace, with Google sign-in

Verified orchestraos.com accounts and the owner can sign in automatically. Other Google accounts can request access by signing in; the owner must approve them first. Contact the operator for a machine API key.

Machine keys are managed on the server. Browser access uses your sign-in session.

Reference & explorer

Choose an endpoint to see its contract and make a real request. Public data, status and contract requests work without signing in. Sign in for camera data and other private resources. Your browser uses your session; machine integrations use a bearer key.

Your response will appear here.

The downloadable OpenAPI contract includes every resource, parameter, body schema, and authentication requirement. Media endpoints return raw bytes; SSE returns events.

Data you can trust to expire

All timestamps are Unix milliseconds. Compare source times to the response’s server clock, then advance with a monotonic local timer. Camera exposure clocks are unverified. An insight may be an AI estimate; it is not a verified event.

When no fresh finding exists, the feed returns observed activity or an explicit waiting status. Keep that status visible instead of showing an old finding as live. Video, frames, and playback links require authentication. Website actions use your sign-in session.

Predictable limits. Useful errors.

On HTTP 429, honor Retry-After. Missing or invalid keys return HTTP 401. Cookie-authenticated writes require a CSRF token and an allowed Origin.

Processing writes require an Idempotency-Key. Exact-body replays return the saved result for up to 24 hours, within the current process lifetime. A changed body returns 409. Server restarts clear this memory; inspect recent jobs before retrying uncertain writes.

Errors include error.code, error.message, and error.requestId. Include the request ID when reporting a problem. Pagination supports limit (1–100) and cursor. Never include a credential in a URL.

Live updates without busy loops

Use GET /runtime for the suggested world polling interval. Poll insights according to refreshAfterMs, honor capture expiry, and stop background requests when your app is inactive. Apple clients share this behavior in OrchestraCore.

GET /events offers world snapshot and delta events when the processing connection supports streaming. Send your bearer key with a streaming fetch client. The website uses session cookies with EventSource; machine clients send a bearer header with a streaming HTTP client. Do not put a key in the URL.

Streams reconnect after at most 110 seconds to recheck authorization. Two concurrent streams are allowed per key. Events are not replayable and have no historical resume cursor. On 503, use /world polling. On reconnect, rebuild state from the next snapshot.

Small SDKs. No extra runtime.

Download the source clients directly. They use native HTTP libraries, preserve API errors, and retry transient reads. Processing writes are never silently retried.

import { Orchestra } from './orchestra.mjs';
const api = new Orchestra({ apiKey: process.env.ORCHESTRA_API_KEY });
const { insights } = await api.insights();
console.log(insights[0]);

import os
from orchestra import Orchestra
api = Orchestra(api_key=os.environ['ORCHESTRA_API_KEY'])
print(api.insights()['insights'][0])

Apple apps use the same Swift package, OrchestraCore, for API transport, Keychain storage, data models, polling, and insight state. iPhone, Mac, and Vision Pro also share their main SwiftUI screens.

Changelog

Additive fields may appear within v1. Ignore fields you do not recognize. Breaking contract changes will use a new major path; any announced deprecation will appear here.

Service & support

Service health is available without signing in.

GET /api/v1/status reports degraded with one or more reasons: counts-stale (no count data in 15 minutes), catalog-stale (no camera catalog in 30 minutes), perception-stopped (the detector is not running), no-fresh-cameras (no camera frame in the last minute) or ai-review-stalled (no AI scene review in 10 minutes). It never returns raw errors.

Camera decoding and inference run on the Orchestra processing server. Camera imagery and per-object live data require authentication; the open data above is aggregate only.

For access changes or integration support, contact the operator with your request ID. Never share a full API key.