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

# Introduction

<p style={{ fontSize: "0.8rem", opacity: 0.6 }}>For AI agents: <a href="https://docs.octen.ai/overview/introduction.md">docs.octen.ai/overview/introduction.md</a></p>

Octen is the search infrastructure for AI: a real-time web search foundation that lets LLMs, agents, and apps reason with the world's latest information.

Going beyond traditional search, Octen spans the whole path from query to result: from Broad Search, which covers one question from multiple angles in a single call, to applications that deliver finished, cited answers and research reports.

Octen is also multimodal end to end. Web pages, images, and videos can all be searched, embedded, and used to generate new content, so AI and agents can work with the web the way people actually see it.

## Why Octen

* **Real-time by default.** Minute-level index freshness, with second-level updates for fast-moving data such as stock prices and live sports.
* **Built for AI consumption.** Results come back LLM-ready: ranked, highlighted, token-efficient, with optional clean full content.
* **Fast and accurate.** Average search latency as low as 62ms; SOTA models top-ranked on search benchmarks (SimpleQA, FreshQA), text retrieval (RTEB #1 and #2), and multimodal retrieval (MMEB-v2).
* **Multilingual and multimodal.** Sites from across the globe in 100+ languages, with dedicated Image Search and Video Search beyond text.
* **Specialized and flexible.** Purpose-built modes for verticals such as news and design, plus per-request options that tune sources, time windows, and output format to your needs.
* **Production-grade.** Up to 500 QPS on subscription plans and a 99.9% monthly uptime SLA on paid plans.
* **One platform, full loop.** Search, extract, embeddings, model gateway, and research workflows behind a single API key.

## APIs

Each API handles one capability. Start from the card that matches what you have and what you need back.

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Broad Search" icon="magnifying-glass-plus" href="/capabilities/broad-search">
    Input: A text query

    Output: Ranked web results for each sub-query, with relevant highlights and optional full content

    Best for: Comparisons, research, topic surveys, multi-angle questions

    How to use: Feed the grouped results to a model to answer the whole question at once.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Web Search" icon="magnifying-glass" href="/capabilities/web-search">
    Input: A text query

    Output: Ranked web results with relevant highlights, optional full content

    Best for: Search bars, answer engines, news lookup, market or company tracking

    How to use: Show the results directly, or pass the results to a model to generate grounded answers.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Image Search" icon="image" href="/capabilities/image-search">
    Input: A text query and/or an image

    Output: Ranked image results; for design topic, also a summary and reusable snippet.

    Best for: Image lookup, visual references, design assets and inspiration

    How to use: Pass the results to a model as visual or design reference.

    Invite-only beta. Email support<span>@</span>octen.ai.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Video Search" icon="video" href="/capabilities/video-search">
    Input: A text query

    Output: Ranked video results

    Best for: Video lookup, clip discovery, media previews

    How to use: Pass the results to a model to reference the matching video.

    Invite-only beta. Email support<span>@</span>octen.ai.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Extract" icon="file-lines" href="/capabilities/extract">
    Input: One or more URLs

    Output: Clean page content with optional highlights, page classification, and media resources

    Best for: Reading pages, cleaning articles, knowledge ingestion

    How to use: Store, display, summarize, or pass the content to a model as context.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Model Gateway" icon="robot" href="/capabilities/model-gateway">
    Input: A question, chat messages, or an image description

    Output: Model responses or generated images

    Best for: Chat assistants, agents, image generation, workloads that need fresh web knowledge

    How to use: Use the responses to build chat, agent, or image features.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Embedding" icon="binary" href="/capabilities/embedding">
    Input: Text

    Output: Text vectors

    Best for: Semantic search, RAG, recommendations

    How to use: Convert text into vectors, store them in a vector database, and compare queries against vectors.
  </Card>

  <Card title="VL Embedding" icon="vector-square" href="/capabilities/vl-embedding">
    Input: Text, images, videos

    Output: Multimodal vectors

    Best for: Cross-modal search, visual retrieval

    How to use: Convert multimodal content into vectors so text, images, and videos can be searched or matched.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Applications

Use applications when you want to run a complete workflow.

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Answer" icon="comments" href="/capabilities/answer">
    Input: A question or chat messages

    Output: A synthesized answer grounded in search results, with the sub-queries and sources used

    Best for: Q\&A, chat assistants, grounded answers with citations

    How to use: Send the user's question. Octen returns the synthesized answer and its sources.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Deep Research" icon="file-magnifying-glass" href="/capabilities/deep-research">
    Input: A research question

    Output: A structured report with supporting evidence

    Best for: Deep dives, strategic research, technical investigations, trend analysis

    How to use: Enter a research question. Octen plans, searches over multiple rounds, and streams the final report.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Multimodal Chat" icon="message-image" href="/capabilities/multimodal-chat">
    Input: A question or chat messages

    Output: An interleaved response of text, images, and videos, grounded in multimodal search results

    Best for: Visual Q\&A, rich chat experiences

    How to use: Send the user's question. Octen replies with interleaved text, images, and videos.

    Invite-only beta. Email support<span>@</span>octen.ai.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Grounded Generation" icon="wand-magic-sparkles" href="/capabilities/grounded-generation">
    Input: A generation prompt

    Output: Generated images or videos grounded in search results

    Best for: Fact-grounded visuals, illustrated explainers

    How to use: Send a prompt. Octen generates grounded images or videos.

    Invite-only beta. Email support<span>@</span>octen.ai.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Next Steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Quickstart" icon="rocket" href="/overview/quickstart">
    Get an API key and make your first request.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Build with Coding Agent" icon="robot" href="/overview/build-with-coding-agent">
    Everything a coding agent needs to integrate Octen.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Try in Console" icon="play" href="https://octen.ai/platform">
    Run every API live in the Octen console.
  </Card>

  <Card title="API Reference" icon="code" href="/api-reference/broad-search">
    Full request/response schemas.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>