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Authentication

Guardion authenticates every request with an API key. How you pass it differs between Guard and the Gateway.

Guard

Guard authenticates with your API key as a Bearer token. Create and manage keys in the console under Settings → API Keys. Keep keys server-side — never ship a Guardion API key in client-side code.

Missing or invalid credentials return 401 Unauthorized.

Authorization header

Authorization: Bearer gd_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Gateway

When calling the Gateway, your Guardion key goes in the x-guardion-api-key header, and the Authorization header carries your own LLM provider key — which the gateway forwards to the provider untouched (Guardion never stores it).

Header	Required	Purpose
x-guardion-api-key	Yes	Your Guardion API key — authenticates against Guard.
Authorization	Yes	Your provider key (e.g. Bearer sk-...), forwarded to the LLM provider as-is.
x-guardion-policy	No	Policy slug that loads the guardrail definitions to apply.
x-guardion-provider	No	LLM provider (openai, anthropic, …). Inferred from the model prefix if omitted.

curl https://api.guardion.ai/v1/guard \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GUARDION_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Hello" }] }'

Response

{
  "detail": "No token provided"
}