| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| API | A way for software to ask Valyu for something and get a structured answer back. Your code sends a request; Valyu returns results. |
| API key | A private password your software uses to call Valyu. Create one at platform.valyu.ai and keep it secret, like a password. |
| Search | Valyu’s API for finding evidence: you send a question, it returns the most relevant passages from the web and specialist sources, each with a link. Your first search |
| DeepResearch | Valyu’s API for a whole research job. You send a brief; it plans, searches, reads and writes a cited report, plus any files you ask for. Overview |
| Brief | The instructions you give DeepResearch: the question, where to look (research_strategy) and how the report should read (report_format). |
| Mode | How much research a DeepResearch task does, from instant (under 30 seconds) to max (up to 90 minutes). Deeper modes cost more credits. |
| Deliverables | Files DeepResearch builds alongside the report: CSV, Excel, PowerPoint, Word or PDF. Deliverables |
| Citation | A numbered pointer in a report to the source a claim came from. DeepResearch citations can include the exact passage. |
| Source | Where evidence comes from: a web page, an SEC filing, a paper, a trial record, a patent or a dataset. Data sources |
| Dataset ID | The name of a specialist source in the API, such as valyu/valyu-pubmed or valyu/valyu-sec-filings. Use it to search only that source. |
| Credits | The unit Valyu bills in. A web search with ten results uses 1 credit. Pricing |
| MCP | Model Context Protocol: a standard way for AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT to use outside tools. Valyu’s MCP server lets your assistant search with Valyu. Use Valyu in Claude or ChatGPT |
| Connector | What Claude and ChatGPT call an MCP server you add to them. |
| SDK | A library that makes the API easier to call from a programming language. Valyu has Python and TypeScript SDKs. |
| Task ID | The deepresearch_id you get when you start a research task. Keep it to check progress and collect the result. |
| Share link | A public link to a finished report that anyone can open without logging in. Share a report |
| Point in time | Pinning research to a past date so it works from what was published by then. Useful for testing a strategy against what was known at the time. |
Key terms
Plain-English definitions of the terms in the Valyu docs: API keys, MCP, credits, Search, Contents, DeepResearch modes, deliverables, sources and citations.
New to Valyu, or to building with AI? These are the terms you’ll meet most often in these docs.
Still stuck on a word? Ask the assistant in the top bar of these docs, or contact us.
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