> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.unstructured.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Unstructured API quickstart

> Use curl or the Unstructured Python SDK to turn local documents into AI-ready JSON.

## Requirements

<Steps>
  <Step title="Sign up">
    **For individual developers and individual users**: If you have not yet signed up for Unstructured, do so now as follows:

    1. Go to [https://developer.unstructured.io](https://developer.unstructured.io).
    2. Follow the on-screen instructions to sign up.

    **For Business account users**: If you are an [Unstructured Business](/business/overview) account user, you are already signed up. Skip ahead to the next step.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Get your API URL">
    **For individual developers and individual users**: Get your API URL as follows:

    1. Go to [https://platform.unstructured.io](https://platform.unstructured.io) and sign in.
    2. On the sidebar, click **API Keys**.
    3. Next to **Unstructured API Endpoint**, copy the complete URL.
    4. Skip ahead to the next step.

    **For Business account users**: Get your API URL as follows:

    1. Go to your Unstructured account's website and sign in. If you don't know this website's address, see your
       Unstructured account administrator.
    2. In the top navigation bar's organization account drop-down, select the name of the Unstructured organizational
       account that contains the workspace for which you want to get the API URL.
    3. In the sidebar, click **Settings**, and then click **View All Workspaces**.
    4. Click the name of the workspace for which you want to get the API URL.
    5. Next to **Unstructured API Endpoint**, copy the complete URL.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Get your API key">
    **For individual developers and individual users**: Get your API key as follows:

    1. Go to [https://developer.unstructured.io](https://developer.unstructured.io) and sign in.
    2. Click **API Keys**, and store the API key's value in a secure location.
    3. Skip ahead to the next step.

    **For Business account users**: Get your API key as follows:

    1. Go to your Unstructured account's website and sign in. If you don't know this website's address, see your
       Unstructured account administrator.
    2. In the top navigation bar's organization account drop-down, select the name of the Unstructured organizational
       account that contains the workspace for which you want to create an API key.
    3. In the sidebar, click **Settings**, and then click **View All Workspaces**.
    4. Click the name of the workspace for which you want to create an API key.
    5. In the workspace's title bar, click **API Keys**.
    6. Click **Generate New Key**. This API key works for this workspace only.
    7. Enter some name for new API key, and then click **Continue**.
    8. Next to **Key ID** for the new API key, click the **Copy** icon.
    9. Paste the copied API key's value into a secure location.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Set environment variables">
    This quickstart assumes that you have set two local environment variables that your local curl scripts or Python code can
    access. These two environment variables are:

    * `UNSTRUCTURED_API_URL`, representing your Unstructured API URL, which you got from the previous step.
    * `UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY`, representing your Unstructured API key, which you got from the previous step.

    For instructions about how to set these environment variables accordingly, see your local operating system's documentation.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Install the tools">
    **For curl users**: To use this quickstart with curl, you only need to have curl installed locally. For installation instructions, see your local operating system's documentation.

    **For Python users**: To use this quickstart with Python, install the Unstructured Python SDK locally by running the following command:

    ```bash theme={null}
    pip install unstructured-client
    ```
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Quickstarts by use case

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Transform" href="/api-reference/quickstart/transform">
    Transform your documents' contents into text and metadata, which Unstructured outputs as standard AI-ready JSON.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Enrich" href="/api-reference/quickstart/enrich">
    Uncover more context and insights from your documents, which Unstructured adds to your existing AI-ready JSON.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Embed" href="/api-reference/quickstart/embed">
    Power up semantic search and retrieval with vector embeddings that Unstructured generates. These
    embeddings are based on your documents' text content.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Extract" href="/api-reference/quickstart/extract">
    Extract just the data that you care about from your documents, which Unstructured outputs as JSON object data records.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>