NLWeb /ask

EvalGate exposes an authenticated NLWeb-compatible /ask endpoint for agents that need to find published documentation. It performs bounded deterministic search over EvalGate’s published documentation catalog. It does not call a model, read repositories, access customer data, or summarize private content. Every request requires an organization-scoped EvalGate API key with the docs:read scope:

curl 'https://www.evalgate.com/ask?q=MCP&streaming=false' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EVALGATE_API_KEY"

The endpoint also accepts the modern POST shape:

{
  "query": { "text": "How do I connect MCP?" },
  "prefer": { "streaming": false }
}

The legacy POST shape { "query": "How do I connect MCP?", "streaming": true } remains accepted. GET uses query, q, or text as the query parameter. Results are list/search results only; summarize and generate modes return a truthful unsupported-mode error.

JSON response

Non-streaming requests return query_id, the normalized query, a deterministic results list, and NLWeb metadata:

{
  "query_id": "nlweb-…",
  "query": "How do I connect MCP?",
  "results": [
    {
      "name": "MCP integration",
      "identifier": "platform/mcp-integration",
      "title": "MCP integration",
      "url": "https://www.evalgate.com/docs/platform/mcp-integration",
      "site": "evalgate.com",
      "description": "Configure Claude, coding agents, and other MCP clients.",
      "text": "…",
      "score": 9,
      "schema_object": {
        "@context": "https://schema.org",
        "@type": "TechArticle",
        "name": "MCP integration",
        "description": "Configure Claude, coding agents, and other MCP clients.",
        "url": "https://www.evalgate.com/docs/platform/mcp-integration"
      }
    }
  ],
  "_meta": { "response_type": "answer", "version": "0.2" }
}

Streaming response

Set prefer.streaming to true (or use the legacy streaming field) to receive text/event-stream. Events are emitted in this order:

start — identifies the query.
result — one event per matching published document.
complete — reports the result count.

The WWW-Authenticate challenge on a 401 points agents to EvalGate’s protected-resource metadata. A key with no docs:read grant receives 403.

Overview

Endpoints

NLWeb /ask

NLWeb /ask

JSON response

Streaming response

​NLWeb /ask

​JSON response

​Streaming response

NLWeb /ask

JSON response

Streaming response