Introducing Stellarium

What is Stellarium?

Stellarium is a web API platform that connects independent APIs together. This allows anyone to stitch data together from many disparate systems. The main goal for Stellarium is to become a global repository for web APIs, the same way NPM or Maven are global repositories for Typescript and Java libraries, respectively.

Querying the platform

Queries to Stellarium use a programming language called RequestScript.

RequestScript is more advanced than GraphQL, but not as complicated as to make queries hard to understand or error-prone.

request MyRequest {
  return "Hello World!"
}

Resources

Resources are the brains of Stellarium. They are collections of functions implemented in a host language that can be invoked in RequestScript.

Stellarium Resources can be invoked from any server without worrying about the host, retries, status codes, etc.

request MyRequest {
  const weather: com.example.Weather

  const temp = weather.temperature(city: "Oslo")

  if (temp.error != null) {
    return null
  }

  return temp.value
}

The server your query was sent to takes care of finding the correct server to invoke the Resource Function.

Stitch data how you need, in the moment

Unlike GraphQL, Stellarium Resource schemas are not rigid, and the data from resource functions can be stitched together how you need at the time.

In the following example, the user generates a UUID, validates a vendor exists, a location exists, and saves an invoice all in one request to a server. In GraphQL or an API following RESTful practices, this would require multiple round trips back to the server.

request SaveInvoice {
    const uuidGenerator: sh.stellarium.stdlib.Uuid
    const vendors: com.grocer.Vendors
    const locations: com.grocer.Locations
    const invoices: com.grocer.Invoices

    const vendorId = "e26123e2-c998-46e7-8931-db987b091ca4"
    const locationId = "d585b14e-cc53-4a10-bc9a-be44d17a4dd9"

    const vendor = vendors.getById(id: vendorId)
    if (vendor.error != null) {
        return {
            error: "Vendor ${vendorId} not found"
        }
    }

    const location = locations.getById(id: locationId)
    if (location.error != null) {
        return {
            error: "Location ${locationId} not found"
        }
    }

    return invoices.save(
        invoiceId: uuidGenerator.new(),
        vendorId: vendorId,
        locationId: locationId
    )
}

With this, Stellarium effectively neutralizes a major flaw of microservice architectures--communication complexity.

Monetization

Stellarium supports monetization by allowing users to preload their clients with funds using Stripe.

API providers can set up payouts on their side to earn money from their APIs.

Learn more about Monetization in Stellarium Platform.

Last but not least, AI

We cannot talk about engineering APIs without of course, bringing up AI. Stellarium supports inference APIs directly with Inference Resource Functions. This special type of function keeps track of input and output tokens and estimates token usage.

request CallClaude {
    const sonnet: sh.stellarium.inference.claude.Sonnet

    const result = sonnet.message(prompt: "Who are you?", maxTokens: 1000)

    if (result.error != null) {
        return result.error.message
    }

    return result.value
}

Effortlessly combine inference and APIs

Easily combine the inputs and outputs of inference resource functions and fixed resource functions:

request CheckVendorBill {
    const sonnet: sh.stellarium.inference.claude.Sonnet
    const vendors: com.grocer.Vendors

    const vendor = vendors.getById("e26123e2-c998-46e7-8931-db987b091ca4")
    if (vendor.error != null) {
      return "Vendor does not exist"
    }

    const result = sonnet.message(prompt: "Is this vendor attempting fraud? payment: $10,000 name: ${vendor.name}, location: ${vendor.location}", maxTokens: 1000)

    if (result.error != null) {
        return result.error.message
    }

    return result.value
}

Request for collaborators

Stellarium is a big project and we are looking for more collaborators to help materialize this idea to the fullest. There are many ways to help on the project:

• Research
• Web development
• Writing blog articles (like this one!)
• Programming language development

Join our Discord to help out!

Conclusion

Stellarium offers many advantages over traditional API solutions from REST, to SOAP, to GraphQL. Learn more or start building an API today!