Compress

Compress a prompt and context to reduce token usage while preserving semantic meaning.

POST /compress/raw

Compress

cURL

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.scaledown.xyz/compress/raw/ \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --header 'x-api-key: <api-key>' \
  --data '
{
  "context": "<string>",
  "prompt": "<string>",
  "scaledown": {
    "rate": "<string>"
  }
}
'

200

{
  "compressed_prompt": "<string>",
  "original_prompt_tokens": 123,
  "compressed_prompt_tokens": 123,
  "successful": true,
  "latency_ms": 123,
  "request_metadata": {
    "compression_time_ms": 123,
    "compression_rate": "<string>",
    "prompt_length": 123,
    "compressed_prompt_length": 123
  }
}

Overview

The /compress/raw/ endpoint compresses your prompt and context, reducing token count while maintaining the semantic integrity needed for high-quality AI responses. Compression ratios of 50–70% are typical, with no meaningful degradation in downstream model output quality.

Request

context · string · required

Background information, instructions, or supporting text that provides context for the prompt. This is the content most aggressively compressed — structure and meaning are preserved, but redundancy is removed.

prompt · string · required

The main query or question to send to your AI model. Kept intact where possible to preserve intent.

scaledown · object · required

Compression configuration.

Show scaledown fields

rate · string | number · required

Compression aggressiveness. Use "auto" to let ScaleDown pick the optimal rate based on content, or pass a number between 0 and 1 to set a fixed target ratio (e.g. 0.5 = compress to 50% of original tokens).

Response

compressed_prompt · string

The compressed output, ready to pass directly to your AI model in place of the original context and prompt.

original_prompt_tokens · number

Token count of the original input.

compressed_prompt_tokens · number

Token count of the compressed output.

successful · boolean

Whether the compression completed successfully.

latency_ms · number

End-to-end request latency in milliseconds.

request_metadata · object

Show Metadata fields

compression_time_ms · number

Time spent on compression in milliseconds.

compression_rate · string | number

The compression rate that was applied — either "auto" or the numeric value provided.

prompt_length · number

Character length of the original input.

compressed_prompt_length · number

Character length of the compressed output.

Error responses

Status	Meaning
400 Bad Request	Malformed request body or missing required fields.
401 Unauthorized	Missing or invalid x-api-key.
429 Too Many Requests	Rate limit exceeded. Back off and retry.
500 Internal Server Error	Compression service unavailable.

Authentication

Include your API key in every request using the x-api-key header.

-H "x-api-key: <your-api-key>"

Examples

Auto compression

cURL

curl -X POST https://api.scaledown.xyz/compress/raw/ \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: <your-api-key>" \
  -d '{
    "context": "ScaleDown is a context engineering platform. It compresses AI prompts while preserving semantic integrity...",
    "prompt": "Summarize what ScaleDown does in one sentence.",
    "scaledown": {
      "rate": "auto"
    }
  }'

Response:

{
  "compressed_prompt": "ScaleDown: context engineering platform, compresses AI prompts, preserves semantic integrity.\n\nSummarize what ScaleDown does in one sentence.",
  "original_prompt_tokens": 150,
  "compressed_prompt_tokens": 65,
  "successful": true,
  "latency_ms": 2341,
  "request_metadata": {
    "compression_time_ms": 2341,
    "compression_rate": "auto",
    "prompt_length": 425,
    "compressed_prompt_length": 189
  }
}

Fixed compression rate

Pass a number for rate when you need a guaranteed token budget.

cURL

curl -X POST https://api.scaledown.xyz/compress/raw/ \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: <your-api-key>" \
  -d '{
    "context": "...",
    "prompt": "What are the key points?",
    "scaledown": {
      "rate": 0.4
    }
  }'

Notes

• "auto" rate is recommended for most use cases. Fixed rates below 0.3 may noticeably affect output quality on dense technical content.
• The compressed_prompt field is a single string — pass it as the full prompt to your downstream model, replacing both context and prompt.
• Token counts are estimated using the same tokenizer as the target model family. Exact counts may vary slightly depending on the model you use downstream.

Authorizations

x-api-key · string · header · required

Body

application/json

context · string · required

Background information, instructions, or supporting text that provides context for the prompt.

prompt · string · required

The main query or question to send to your AI model.

scaledown · object · required

Show child attributes

Response

200

application/json

Successful compression

compressed_prompt · string

original_prompt_tokens · number

compressed_prompt_tokens · number

successful · boolean

latency_ms · number

request_metadata · object

Show child attributes