Quickstart

From zero to first call in two minutes.

Generate a Personal Access Token (PAT), make your first request, and confirm everything is wired up before plugging in your AI tool.

1. Generate a token

Sign in at app.storylayer.ai and visit Developers in the sidebar. Click Generate token, give it a name, pick a scope preset (or check individual scopes — see Scopes), and optionally bind the token to a single project.

The token is shown once. Storylayer stores only a SHA-256 hash; if you lose the raw token, revoke it and create a new one.

2. Health-check the token

curl https://app.storylayer.ai/api/v1/health \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sl_pat_..."

You should get back something like:

{
  "ok": true,
  "user_id": "1d3a...",
  "project_id": null,
  "scopes": ["projects:read","stories:read","stories:write"],
  "server_time": "2026-04-30T..."
}

3. List your projects

curl https://app.storylayer.ai/api/v1/projects \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sl_pat_..."

Account-scoped tokens see every project; project-scoped tokens return only their bound project. Use the project ID from this response in the next call.

4. Create a story

Single post:

curl -X POST https://app.storylayer.ai/api/v1/stories \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sl_pat_..." \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "projectId": "PROJECT_ID",
    "caption": "Snow report: 14 inches overnight at Winter Park.",
    "channels": ["instagram"],
    "media_url": "https://cdn.example.com/cover.jpg",
    "scheduled_at_local": "2026-05-01T07:00:00",
    "timezone": "America/New_York"
  }'

Carousel (2–10 slides):

curl -X POST https://app.storylayer.ai/api/v1/stories \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sl_pat_..." \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "projectId": "PROJECT_ID",
    "caption": "Winter Park'\''s deepest week — by the numbers.",
    "channels": ["instagram"],
    "post_type": "carousel",
    "slides": [
      { "media_url": "https://cdn.example.com/s1.png", "alt_text": "14 inches overnight" },
      { "media_url": "https://cdn.example.com/s2.png", "alt_text": "+4 days of snow ahead" },
      { "media_url": "https://cdn.example.com/s3.png", "alt_text": "Lift status" }
    ],
    "scheduled_at_local": "2026-05-01T19:00:00",
    "timezone": "America/New_York"
  }'

Don't have hosted URLs? Upload bytes directly via POST /api/v1/media with data_base64 + mime_type and pass the returned file_url into create_story.

Use POST /api/v1/stories/:id/publish to ship now or POST /api/v1/stories/:id/schedule to move the time.

5. Plug it into your AI tool

Two paths, same auth:

  • Local agents (Claude Desktop, MCP Inspector): paste the PAT into the client config — see MCP setup.
  • Hosted agents (Claude.ai connectors, ChatGPT GPTs): point the client at the MCP URL and let it walk through OAuth — see OAuth 2.1. No token paste required.

Next steps