Ask Orca

Product API — POST /query

The same Orca, exposed as a stable typed API. Front ends read business fields — ytw, duration, rating — and never need to know which internal tool ran or how it labelled things. Single-bond lookups come back normalized as bond_analytics (clean numerics + source lineage + a one-line summary); everything else is wrapped as raw, so the response is always valid.

The lightbulb 💡

In your own app, you just type what you want — in plain English — and the finished answer comes back ready to show.

"Largest country exposures in wnbf" → a finished pie chart. "Is XS1709535097 cheap?" → a finished fact sheet. You don't pick a tool, build a request, or assemble the answer. You write the question; Orca returns the finished thing.

Two separate halves: the question is yours — free text, typed by your user, from anywhere in your app — and the answer is Orca's — a finished, branded chart, table, or summary. You ask for the answer; you don't make it.

So what do you actually build?

Almost nothing. You send the question, and Orca answers with a typed "block" — it decides whether the answer is a chart, a table, or a fact sheet. You write the code to draw each kind of block exactly once, and after that every new question just works.

You never write a "country exposures chart" and a "yield chart" and a "ratings chart". You write "how to draw a chart" one time. Orca picks which one each answer is.

Step 1 — Ask Orca, and ask for display blocks

One POST. The only special bit is include_display: true — that tells Orca to return ready-to-draw blocks instead of raw data.

Step 2 — What comes back: a list of typed blocks

display.blocks is an array. Each block says what it is (type) and carries its own data. display.theme is your brand (more below).

Step 3 — Draw each block. Write this once.

Loop the blocks, switch on type, hand each to a small draw function. This is the entire integration — and it never grows.

The payoff: when Orca gains a new capability next month that returns a chart, it renders here with zero new code — because you already handle "chart". Your page stops growing; the answers keep coming.

Your brand comes with the answer

display.theme is resolved by Orca from the client_id you send — so charts and tables arrive in your colours, not ours. Apply it once when a response lands:

Same page, different team: send client_id: "guinness" and it's Guinness navy; send another client and it's their colours — no code change. To force a specific look regardless, set HOST_THEME at the top of the script and your values always win.

Even less work, later

The three steps above are the do-it-yourself version. The next step is that you don't write drawChart at all — you drop in our renderer component and feed it display. Same blocks, same theme, but the drawing code lives with us and every client gets it for free. Until then, the loop above is all you need.

Get the code 🧑‍💻

Type what you want in the Question box (top-left), in plain English — this shows the exact request to send Orca to get it back as a finished, ready-to-draw answer. Change the question and the code updates live. Swap in your own X-Client-ID and X-API-Key and it runs from anywhere.