Sandbox

#Get a sandbox key (60 seconds)

No waitlist, no sales call, no payment method required.

1. Open /onboarding. Sign in with your work email (magic-link auth — no password).
2. Name your firm. One firm per account.
3. On the next screen (/portal/api), click Mint key → pick env sandbox → copy the token. This is the only time the raw token is shown.

Live keys (vc_live_…) unlock the moment you add a default payment method on the same page. Everything else (webhook URL, spend caps, label) configures identically across both environments.

#Lifecycle (what the sandbox does)

Status is a pure function of (createdAt, productLine, now). No background worker, no pipeline kick — status() advances the row atomically on each poll.

That's ~2 minutes to ready for full translation, ~90 seconds for Review-and-Certify. Both fire webhooks at each transition — exactly one per state change, even when many polls race.

#Smoke test (copy-paste, ~3 minutes)

The shortest path to “I've exercised every endpoint.” Substitute your sandbox token.

# 0. Ground on enums
curl -s https://verdacert.com/api/v1/capabilities \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer vc_sandbox_…" | jq .

# 1. Quote (free, no order)
QUOTE=$(curl -s -X POST https://verdacert.com/api/v1/quote \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer vc_sandbox_…" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"sourceLanguage":"fa","useCase":"uscis","pageCount":2,"speedTier":"standard"}')
echo "$QUOTE" | jq .
QUOTE_ID=$(echo "$QUOTE" | jq -r .quoteId)

# 2. Submit (returns jobId immediately)
JOB=$(curl -s -X POST https://verdacert.com/api/v1/submit \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer vc_sandbox_…" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{
    \"quoteId\":        \"$QUOTE_ID\",
    \"idempotencyKey\": \"smoke-test-$(date +%s)\",
    \"echoedInput\": {
      \"sourceLanguage\":\"fa\",\"useCase\":\"uscis\",
      \"pageCount\":2,\"speedTier\":\"standard\"
    },
    \"documents\":[{\"url\":\"https://example.com/birth.pdf\"}]
  }")
echo "$JOB" | jq .
JOB_ID=$(echo "$JOB" | jq -r .jobId)

# 3. Poll until ready (sandbox: ~2 min)
while true; do
  STATUS=$(curl -s "https://verdacert.com/api/v1/status/$JOB_ID" \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer vc_sandbox_…" | jq -r .status)
  echo "status: $STATUS"
  [ "$STATUS" = "ready" ] && break
  sleep 20
done

# 4. Fetch certified result
RESULT=$(curl -s "https://verdacert.com/api/v1/result/$JOB_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer vc_sandbox_…")
echo "$RESULT" | jq .
CERT_ID=$(echo "$RESULT" | jq -r .certification.certificateId)

# 5. Verify the certificate (public, no auth)
curl -s "https://verdacert.com/api/v1/verify/$CERT_ID" | jq .

Total wall-clock: ~3 minutes. If anything fails, the response carries an x-vc-request-id header and a structured error body — see /docs/errors.

#What sandbox differs in

Everything else (including JWS receipts) is byte-identical to live.

#When you're ready to promote to live

Sandbox should fully validate your integration before you flip the key.

• ✅ Smoke test completes against sandbox without error handling pop.
• ✅ Webhook receiver verifies signatures and dedups on event.id.
• ✅ Your retry strategy handles retryable: true errors with backoff but never retries 4xx validation failures.
• ✅ You've verified at least one sandbox JWS against JWKS to confirm your verification code works.
• ✅ You're comfortable with the per-page rate sheet — see /pricing.

Then: /portal/api → add a default payment method → mint a live key. Swap the env var. Done.

Where to next