3GPP Scout API — Agent Skill Guide
You have access to the 3GPP Scout API, a semantic search engine over 3GPP technical specifications. Use it to find specific information in 3GPP standards documents (TS and TR series).
Provider & Pricing
Provider: Carrot Labs Homepage: 3gppscout.com Dashboard: dashboard.3gppscout.com API Docs: api.3gppscout.com/docs Terms of Service: 3gppscout.com/terms Privacy Policy: 3gppscout.com/privacy
Direct REST, MCP, and BYOK hosted-chat retrieval share a monthly request allowance. The Explorer plan includes 150 requests per UTC calendar month. Founding Engineer includes 1,000 requests per calendar month for $8/month. Enterprise limits follow the active agreement. View usage or upgrade at dashboard.3gppscout.com/dashboard/billing.
Base URL
https://api.3gppscout.com
Authentication
All search and document endpoints require a Bearer token (API key).
How to get an API key:
- Sign up or log in at dashboard.3gppscout.com
- Go to the API Keys page
- Create a new key — it will start with
sk-
Set your API key via environment variable:
export SCOUT_API_KEY="sk-your-key-here"
Or set skills."3gpp-scout".apiKey / skills."3gpp-scout".env.SCOUT_API_KEY in ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json.
The key is included in every request as a Bearer token:
Authorization: Bearer $SCOUT_API_KEY
MCP Agent Setup
For Cursor, Claude, Codex, or another MCP client, fetch and follow:
https://api.3gppscout.com/agent-setup/prompt.md
The hosted Streamable HTTP MCP URL is:
https://api.3gppscout.com/mcp/
MCP uses OAuth 2.1, so no Scout API key belongs in the MCP configuration. The
first connection or tool call opens a browser for sign-in. After authorization,
verify the connection by calling list_documents with doc_number="38.331"
and release="Rel-19"; keep both filters so verification returns a small list.
Monthly Quota Exhaustion
REST API keys, OAuth-authenticated MCP tools, and BYOK hosted-chat retrieval
share the same request allowance. Regular Scout-funded hosted chat uses
prepaid credits instead. If a tool or endpoint returns HTTP 402, inspect the error's
detail object. The stable machine-readable code is
api_quota_exhausted, and the response includes:
current_planused,limit, andremainingreset_atas a UTC timestampupgrade.plan(Founding Engineer)upgrade.price(8 USDper month)upgrade.requests_per_month(1000)upgrade.url(https://dashboard.3gppscout.com/dashboard/billing)
Do not retry repeatedly while remaining is zero. Wait until reset_at or
present the absolute upgrade.url to the user. FastMCP-generated tools expose
the same FastAPI error payload.
Available Endpoints
POST /search/text
Semantic search over specification text. This is your primary tool.
Request body (JSON):
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| query | string | — | Required. Natural language search query |
| match_count | int | 30 | Candidate matches before reranking (1–200) |
| match_threshold | float | 0.0 | Minimum similarity score (0–1) |
| rerank | bool | true | Rerank results for higher precision |
| rerank_top_k | int | 10 | Results to keep after reranking (1–50) |
| include_section_text | bool | true | Include the full parent section text |
| deduplicate | bool | true | Collapse duplicates across releases/versions; see also_in |
| filter_release | string | null | e.g. "Rel-19", "Rel-15" |
| filter_doc_type | string | null | "TS" or "TR" |
| filter_doc_number | string | null | e.g. "38.331", "23.501" |
| filter_series | string | null | e.g. "38" (NR/5G), "23" (system architecture) |
| filter_section_number | string | null | e.g. "5.3.3" |
Response fields:
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| query | string | Echo of the search query |
| results | TextResult[] | Matching text chunks |
| total | int | Number of results returned |
| reranked | bool | Whether reranking was applied |
| elapsed_ms | float | Server processing time in ms |
Each TextResult contains:
doc_number,doc_type,version,release— document metadatasection_number,section_title— which section the chunk is fromcontent— the matched text chunksimilarity— semantic similarity score (0–1)relevance_score— reranker score (0–1), present when rerankedsection_text— full parent section text (when include_section_text=true)section_token_count— token count of the parent sectionalso_in— when deduplicate is true, other releases/versions that matched the same section (each entry hasrelease,version, and scores)
POST /search/images
Semantic search over figures, diagrams, and tables in specifications.
Request body (JSON):
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| query | string | — | Required. Natural language query |
| match_count | int | 10 | Number of results (1–50) |
| match_threshold | float | 0.3 | Minimum similarity (0–1) |
| deduplicate | bool | true | Collapse duplicates across releases/versions; see also_in |
| filter_release | string | null | e.g. "Rel-19" |
| filter_doc_number | string | null | e.g. "38.300" |
| filter_series | string | null | e.g. "38" |
Each ImageResult contains:
doc_number,doc_type,version,release— document metadatasection_number— which section the image is incaption— figure/table captioncontext_before,context_after— surrounding textimage_path— path to the image filesimilarity— semantic similarity scorealso_in— when deduplicate is true, other releases/versions for the same figure (each entry hasrelease,version, andsimilarity)
POST /search/combined
Text + image search in a single request. Useful for broad questions where both text passages and diagrams are relevant.
Request body (JSON):
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| query | string | — | Required. Natural language query |
| text_match_count | int | 30 | Text candidates before reranking (1–200) |
| text_match_threshold | float | 0.0 | Text similarity threshold (0–1) |
| rerank | bool | true | Rerank text results |
| rerank_top_k | int | 10 | Text results after reranking (1–50) |
| include_section_text | bool | true | Include full parent section text |
| image_match_count | int | 5 | Image results to return (1–50) |
| image_match_threshold | float | 0.0 | Image similarity threshold (0–1) |
| filter_release | string | null | Filter both searches by release |
| filter_doc_type | string | null | Filter text search by doc type |
| filter_doc_number | string | null | Filter both searches by document |
| filter_series | string | null | Filter both searches by series |
| filter_section_number | string | null | Filter text search by section |
Response has text_results (TextResult[]) and image_results (ImageResult[]).
GET /documents
List available 3GPP documents with metadata. Use filters to check if a specific document or release is indexed — this is fast (1-2 lookups). Without filters returns all ~3,200 documents which is slower.
Query parameters:
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| doc_number | string | null | Filter by document number, e.g. "38.811". Recommended. |
| release | string | null | Filter by release, e.g. "Rel-19" |
| series | string | null | Filter by series, e.g. "38" |
| doc_type | string | null | Filter by type: "TS" or "TR" |
Example: Check if TR 38.811 has a Rel-19 version:
GET /documents?doc_number=38.811&release=Rel-19
GET /documents/{document_id}
Get a single document by its numeric ID.
GET /sections
Fetch full section text by section number.
Query parameters:
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| section_number | string | — | Required. Numeric (5.3.3), trailing-letter (5.3.1a), or annex (A.1, B.2.3) |
| doc_number | string | — | Required. e.g. 38.331, 23.501 |
| version | string | null | e.g. 19.1.0 |
| release | string | null | e.g. Rel-19 |
| prefix | bool | false | Match sub-sections too — works for numeric (5.4 → 5.4.1) and annex (A → A.1) |
Behavior on no match: Returns HTTP 200 with an empty list []. If you get an empty
list, call GET /sections/toc?doc_number=… to see the document's actual section IDs —
your section number may use a different form (e.g. annex letter case, or the doc isn't indexed yet).
GET /sections/toc
Table of contents for a document — section numbers and titles without full text.
Query parameters:
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| doc_number | string | — | Required. e.g. "38.321" |
| version | string | null | e.g. "19.1.0" |
GET /images/{doc_number}/{version}/{image_index}
Fetch an extracted image (PNG) from a specification. No authentication required.
The image_path field in image search results (e.g. /images/38.300/19.1.0/5)
maps directly to this endpoint. Construct the full URL as:
https://api.3gppscout.com/images/{doc_number}/{version}/{image_index}
Returns image/png on success, 404 if the image doesn't exist.
Corpus Coverage
The index covers the full published TS/TR corpus for Rel-15 through Rel-20 — not a Rel-15 + Rel-19 subset. Production currently serves 8,700+ document versions, 1.3M+ sections, 2.6M+ text vectors, and 225K+ image vectors.
The corpus is kept current with the 3GPP source: new and bumped specifications are discovered, processed, and merged into the live search index (incremental apply for spec updates; full Vertex rebuilds on a monthly cadence). Do not treat the index as frozen at an older release pair.
The /sections artifacts for the production corpus were refreshed after the
annex-heading parser fix, so annex sections such as A.1 are available via
GET /sections when the caller provides doc_number.
Series 38 = NR/5G, 23 = system architecture, 24 = signaling protocols, 36 = LTE, 33 = security, 29 = core network protocols.
Recommended Workflows
Finding specific technical details
- Use
POST /search/textwith a focused query andrerank_top_k: 5 - Read the
contentfield for the matched chunk - Read
section_textfor the full section context - If you need the broader document structure, call
GET /sections/tocwith thedoc_numberfrom the result
Exploring a specific document
- Get the table of contents:
GET /sections/toc?doc_number=38.331 - Fetch a specific section:
GET /sections?section_number=5.3.3&doc_number=38.331 - Annex sections work the same way:
GET /sections?section_number=A.1&doc_number=38.874 - Use
prefix=trueto get a section and all its sub-sections
Broad topic research
- Use
POST /search/combinedto get both text and diagrams - Use
filter_seriesto narrow to a domain (e.g. "38" for NR) - Increase
rerank_top_kto 15–20 for more diverse results
Comparing across releases
- Search with
filter_release: "Rel-15"for an earlier release - Search again with
filter_release: "Rel-20"(or another release) for a later version - Compare the section text to see what changed
Tips for Best Results
- Always use reranking (enabled by default). The
relevance_scorefrom the reranker is a much better quality signal than rawsimilarity. - Use filters to narrow scope. If you know which spec you're looking for,
filter_doc_numberdramatically improves result quality. - Use
include_section_text: true(the default) to get the full parent section. Thecontentfield is a chunk (~400-800 tokens), whilesection_textgives the complete section for full context. - Cite results precisely. When presenting results to users, always include the document number, section number, and release. For example: "According to TS 38.331 Section 5.3.3 (Rel-19)..."
- Use the TOC endpoint before diving deep into a document. It helps you understand the document structure and find the right section numbers.
- Prefer
/search/textover/search/combinedwhen you only need text. Combined search is slower because it queries both indexes. - Don't set
match_thresholdtoo high. The default of 0.0 with reranking gives the best results. The reranker handles quality filtering. - Render images from search results. Image search results include
image_path(e.g./images/38.300/19.1.0/5). Construct the full URL:https://api.3gppscout.com{image_path}. No authentication required.
Data & Privacy
Queries you send to this API are processed by the 3GPP Scout service to perform vector search. The API does not store your queries beyond transient usage logs for billing. The corpus consists entirely of publicly available 3GPP specifications — no proprietary or user-supplied data is stored in the search index. See 3gppscout.com/privacy for the full privacy policy.