> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.orbitsearch.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Orbit Search: natural language people search for devs

> Orbit Search is a REST API for finding professional profiles with natural language. Search globally, read structured profile data, and build search into your product.

Orbit Search gives you a powerful API to search, discover, and read professional profiles using natural language queries. Whether you need to find founders in a city, filter by company and role, or search across your own custom contact directories, Orbit handles query understanding, entity resolution, and ranking automatically — so you can focus on building.

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Quick Start" icon="bolt" href="/quickstart">
    Make your first search API call in minutes
  </Card>

  <Card title="Authentication" icon="key" href="/authentication">
    Get a dashboard-issued key and choose scopes
  </Card>

  <Card title="Search" icon="magnifying-glass" href="/api/search/smart-search">
    Full reference for the search endpoint
  </Card>

  <Card title="Search Directories" icon="folder" href="/concepts/directories">
    Search across your own people data
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## How it works

Orbit Search exposes a simple REST API. You authenticate with a developer API key, send a natural language query, and receive ranked profile results. No query language to learn — just describe who you're looking for.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Get an API key">
    Sign in to the [Orbit developer dashboard](https://developer.orbitsearch.com/dashboard/keys) and generate a developer API key with the scopes you need (`search:read`, `profile:read`).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Run your first search">
    Call `POST /v2/developer/search` with a natural language query like `"founders in San Francisco"`.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Read profile details">
    Use profile IDs from search results to fetch full public profiles via `GET /v2/developer/profiles/:id`.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Build your integration">
    Add your own data with Search Directories, scope searches to explicit directory IDs, and manage access with organization API keys.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Key features

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Natural Language Search" icon="wand-magic-sparkles" href="/concepts/search">
    Query profiles with plain English — Orbit routes your query through structured, semantic, or agentic modes automatically.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Search Directories" icon="database" href="/concepts/directories">
    Upload CSV contact lists or import connections to create searchable private corpora.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Credit Metering" icon="coins" href="/concepts/credits">
    Transparent per-request credit usage with idempotent retries and automatic refunds on failed searches.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Organization Access" icon="building" href="/concepts/organizations">
    Issue organization-scoped API keys and control directory access with fine-grained grants.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>