Every Orbit account comes with a personal organization created automatically at signup. Personal organizations give you a private space for your own connections and searches. Workspace organizations are shared environments for directories, access grants, and API integrations built on behalf of an organization.
Personal key vs. organization key:
- Use a personal API key for global public search and personal development.
- Use an organization API key for directory search and integrations that should meter credits against an organization.
Organization API keys
Organization API keys authenticate as the organization rather than as a user. This lets a backend service search organization-owned directories without requiring an end-user session.
Create organization keys in the Orbit developer dashboard. Choose the organization that should own the key, select the scopes your integration needs, and copy the raw sk_orb_... value when it appears.
The raw key is shown only once. Store it immediately in your secrets manager. After that, the dashboard only shows safe metadata such as display_key, name, scopes, status, expiration, and last-used timestamps.
Key fields
Dashboard key records expose non-secret metadata:
| Field | Meaning |
|---|
display_key | Safe prefix/suffix representation, such as sk_orb_a0186...55fd |
name | Human-readable label for the key |
scopes | Allowed operations, such as search:read and profile:read |
environment | Optional environment label for organization keys |
last_used_at | Timestamp of the most recent successful request |
is_active | Whether the key can currently authenticate requests |
Directory access
Organization keys can search private directory corpora only when access grants allow it. A key must have one of the following:
- an organization-level grant on the directory
- a direct API-key grant
If none of those grants match, directory-scoped search returns an authorization error.
Search example
Use an organization key exactly like a personal key: pass it as a bearer token.
curl -X POST "https://api.orbitsearch.com/v2/developer/search" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $ORG_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"query": "founders in sf",
"numUsers": 10,
"searchScope": { "type": "directory", "directoryId": "DIRECTORY_UUID" }
}'
