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This quickstart uses Unstructured Pipelines to work with your locally hosted files. Before you begin, your organization must have an established Pipelines account. To purchase Pipelines, contact Unstructured Sales.To use Pipelines to work with remotely hosted files instead, skip this quickstart and use the Unstructured Pipelines API remote files quickstart.To use Unstructured Transform to work with your locally hosted files instead, skip this quickstart and use the Unstructured Transform operations quickstart. Transform is sold separately from Pipelines. Sign up for Transform.
1

Get your Unstructured API URL and API key

Follow one of these procedures, depending on your Unstructured Pipelines product edition. If you are not sure which one to use, ask your Unstructured account administrator, or contact Unstructured Sales.
  1. Go to https://platform.unstructured.io and sign in.
  2. Use the Unstructured account and workspace drop-down lists to pick which workspace you want to create your new API key in. Each API key works with only one workspace.
  3. Click API Keys.
  4. Click Generate New Key, type some memorable name, and click Continue.
  5. Next to the new API key, click the Copy icon. Paste this value into a secure location.
  6. Next to Unstructured API Endpoint, click the Copy button. This is your API URL. Paste this value into a secure location.
2

Create environment variables

Create these two local environment variables:
  • UNSTRUCTURED_API_URL, and set it to your API URL.
  • UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY, and set it to your API key.
To learn how to set these environment variables accordingly, see your system’s documentation.
3

Install required software

Follow one of these procedures, depending on whether you are using Python or cURL.
  1. Make sure you have Python 3.11 or higher installed locally. Check your version or install Python.
  2. (Optional) Use or set up a Python virtual environment locally. A virtual environment is a per-project Python sandbox. It isolates a project’s Python interpreter and packages from your other projects and system-wide Python setup. It is recommended but not required. Popular options include uv (recommended), poetry, venv, and conda.
  3. Install or upgrade the Python SDK locally. (If you are using a virtual environment, replace pip install and pip show as follows with your provider’s related command.) To install, run this command:
    If you already have it, upgrade it with this command:
    To check if you already have it, run this command:
4
Pick a use case to explore.

Transform (recommended for starters)

Transform your documents’ contents into text and metadata, which Unstructured outputs as standard AI-ready JSON.

Enrich

Uncover more context and insights from your documents, which Unstructured adds to your existing AI-ready JSON.

Embed

Power up semantic search and retrieval with vector embeddings that Unstructured generates. These embeddings are based on your documents’ text content.

Extract

Extract just the data that you care about from your documents, which Unstructured outputs as JSON object data records.