API surrogate

also known as: api_surrogate

A capture fidelity level in which the answer is obtained from the model vendor’s official API as a stand-in — a surrogate — for the consumer product. It is a clean, stable baseline, but it is not what a person sees: consumer-UI-only layers such as shopping modules, ads, and the interface’s own source presentation are absent. Surrogate captures must be labeled as such, never passed off as UI captures.

In AI Search API

provenance.fidelity is "api_surrogate" whenever the official-api lane ran, and provenance.acquisition records the lane. Claude works this way today — served through the official model API while the authenticated consumer-UI browser lane is phase-2. Pinning fidelity: "consumer_ui" on a lane that cannot deliver it returns an honest 422 instead of a silent downgrade.

Envelope — provenance of a surrogate capture

"provenance": {
  "acquisition": "official-api",
  "official": true,
  "fidelity": "api_surrogate",
  "loginState": "logged_out"
}

Related terms

See it in the product

Every definition here is enforced in the Envelope contract — run a capture and read the fields yourself.

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