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In this quickstart, you’ll route your first AI request through Lava’s AI Gateway to track usage and costs. Routing through Lava is just a REST POST request — you swap the base URL and auth header, and everything else stays the same.
Building with an AI agent? See the Agents guide for how to do this programmatically from code.
1

Get Your Forward Token

Go to Developers > Secrets in your dashboard and copy your secret key. Then create a forward token — a base64-encoded JSON containing your secret key:
export LAVA_SECRET_KEY=your_secret_key_here
export LAVA_FORWARD_TOKEN=$(echo -n "{\"secret_key\":\"$LAVA_SECRET_KEY\"}" | base64)
A forward token with only a secret_key charges your own merchant wallet — no customer or meter required. This is the simplest way to get started. Learn more in the Forward Proxy guide.
2

Make Your First Request

Your forward token goes in the Authorization header, and the request body stays unchanged from the provider’s API.
curl -X POST 'https://api.lava.so/v1/forward?u=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.openai.com%2Fv1%2Fchat%2Fcompletions' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LAVA_FORWARD_TOKEN" \
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-4o-mini",
    "messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Say hello in one sentence." }]
  }'
3

Check the Dashboard

Go to Analytics > Requests in your dashboard. Find your request by timestamp or request ID to see token counts, cost breakdown, model, and provider — all captured automatically.See the Forward Proxy guide for multi-provider examples, streaming, error handling, and advanced configuration.

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What’s Next?

Charge Your First Customer

Set up pricing and checkout to monetize your AI service

How Lava Works

Understand Lava’s architecture, gateway routing, and key concepts

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Troubleshooting

Go to Gateway > Secrets. If the section is missing, verify you’re logged into a merchant account (not a wallet-only account).
Verify you generated the forward token correctly (base64-encoded JSON with your secret key) and included the Bearer prefix in the Authorization header. See the Forward Proxy troubleshooting for more details.
Your Lava wallet needs funds. Go to Wallet > Billing to add a payment method.
A secret key is your base credential. A forward token is a base64-encoded JSON that always includes your secret_key. With just the secret key, costs are charged to your merchant wallet. For customer billing, add a customer_id and meter_slug to the token to charge the customer’s wallet with your pricing. See the SDK for generating per-customer tokens.