Fundamental Research Labs

Fundamental Research Labs (formerly Altera) is an applied AI research company building autonomous, collaborative AI agents, founded by researchers from MIT EECS, the Stanford NLP Group, Google X, and Citadel and backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Prosus. Its flagship product, Shortcut, is an AI analyst for Excel that turns natural-language prompts into full spreadsheet models — LBOs, DCFs, three-statement models, waterfalls — and ships a web app, desktop app, Excel and Google Sheets plugins, a ShortcutXL terminal agent (CLI), and a Platform API. The Shortcut Platform API lets teams submit spreadsheet-automation jobs, poll status, download generated workbooks, upload context files, list agent skills, and export organization usage data programmatically using API-key bearer authentication.

Fundamental Research Labs publishes 3 API contracts indexed on the APIs.io network: Authentication API, Spreadsheets API, and Usage API. Tagged areas include Company, Artificial Intelligence, Spreadsheets, Excel, and Financial Modeling.

The Fundamental Research Labs catalog on APIs.io includes 1 event-driven AsyncAPI specification and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Fundamental Research Labs’ developer surface includes documentation, API reference, getting-started guide, pricing, signup flow, engineering blog, support, and 26 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

64.4/100 strong ▬ flat Agent 31/100 agent ready Front door AI 4/6 moderate Heartbeat 83/100 alive saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemiumSelf serve⚡ Free to try

1 published contract 3 Agent Skills

Company Artificial Intelligence Spreadsheets Excel Financial Modeling Agents Automation Productivity Data Analysis

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 64.4/100 · strong

Contract Quality 9.5 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 10.1 / 15

Access Clarity 13.8 / 15

Operational Transparency 5.6 / 10

Contract Governance 2.9 / 9

Discoverability 5.5 / 8

Regulatory Posture 4.1 / 15

Create-or-Update Ergonomics 0.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 31/100 · agent ready

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 6 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 8 / 8

Request/Response Examples 7 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 6 / 6

Agent Skills 5 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created. Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet, not penalised by it.

The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 25. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented)
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
Registration Without a Human +6 pts — a `registration_endpoint` in the served RFC 8414 / OIDC discovery document
Delegated User Identity +6 pts — a served discovery document listing authorization_code in grant_types_supported (served), else an oauth2 authorizationCode flow or openIdConnect declared in an OpenAPI (documented)
Protected Resource Metadata +5 pts — a served /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource carrying `resource` (documented), and naming its authorization_servers (verified)

4 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Contract Quality scores 50.8 — up to +12.3 composite points
Contract Governance scores 31.8 — up to +8.2 composite points
Developer Ergonomics scores 67.3 — up to +6.5 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/fundamental-research-labs/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/fundamental-research-labs to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Standards implemented 1

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

OpenAPI

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

APIs 3

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Fundamental Research Labs Authentication API

API key authentication and verification

Fundamental Research Labs Spreadsheets API

Spreadsheet processing and automation endpoints

Fundamental Research Labs Usage API

Export team usage metrics for reporting, finance, and internal analytics. Usage Metrics in Shortcut provides a prefilled request with your team_id; use this reference to customi...

Postman Collections 3

Ready-to-run Postman collections for exercising this provider's APIs.

Shortcut Authentication API

POSTMAN

Shortcut Authentication Spreadsheets API

POSTMAN

Shortcut Authentication Usage API

POSTMAN

Open Collections 3

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Shortcut Authentication API

OPEN COLLECTION

Shortcut Authentication Spreadsheets API

OPEN COLLECTION

Shortcut Authentication Usage API

OPEN COLLECTION

Agent Skills 3

Packaged agent skills for driving this provider's APIs from an AI assistant.

Export team usage metrics

AGENT SKILL

Generate a spreadsheet from a prompt

AGENT SKILL

Upload files and run an analysis with skills

AGENT SKILL

Fundamental Research Labs API pricing

Prices published by Fundamental Research Labs, read 2026-10-28 from shortcut.ai/pricing.

Plan	Price
Free	$0/ month Includes: 20 free weekly credits; access on web, desktop app, Excel plugin, Google Sheets plugin
Pro	$100/ month Includes: 1,000 monthly plan credits; unlimited file creation and edits; Platform API access
Teams	$320/ month + $100 per seat/ month Includes: 1,000 monthly pooled team credits
Enterprise	Custom Includes: Everything in Teams, plus SSO, BYOK, dedicated support

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

requests_per_minute: minute
concurrent_jobs: concurrent
max_file_size_mb: per file

All 5 limits →

Billed by: seat · FinOps profile →

Pricing Plans 2

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Fundamental Research Labs Plans

4 plans

PLANS

Fundamental Research Labs Price Estimates

0 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Fundamental Research Labs Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

Service Levels 1

Uptime the provider promises or reports, as SLA4OAI. Read from its own pages; APIs.io runs no monitors.

Fundamental Research Labs

SLA

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Fundamental Research Labs Finops

FINOPS

Event Specifications 1

AsyncAPI definitions for this provider's event-driven and streaming APIs.

Fundamental Research Labs Webhooks

ASYNCAPI

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Fundamental Research Labs API Rules

50 rules · 45 errors 4 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

OpenAPI Overlays 1

Overlays applied on top of this provider's contracts. Each card says who wrote it: a document the provider publishes, or one API Evangelist derived or generated.

Fundamental Research Labs Shortcut Overlay

11 actions · documentation · fundamental-research-labs-openapi-original.json

DERIVED

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Fundamental Research Labs Authentication

apiKey/http · 2 schemes

SECURITY

Fundamental Research Labs Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Fundamental Research Labs Agentic Access

10 operations · 3 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Get Started 3

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

DeveloperPortal

DeveloperPortal

GettingStarted

GettingStarted

SignUp

SignUp

Documentation 3

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

APIReference

APIReference

OpenAPI

OpenAPI

Agent Surfaces 4

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

X-MCPServerCandidate

LLMsTxt

AgenticAccess

AgentSkill

Design & Contract 6

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Conformance

ErrorCatalog

Lifecycle

Conventions

DataModel

Webhooks

Build 4

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

PostmanWorkspace

PostmanWorkspace

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

Packages

Packages

CLI

CLI

Access & Security 3

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

Compliance

Compliance

Authentication

Authentication

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 3

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Support

Support

ChangeLog

ChangeLog

RateLimits

RateLimits

Commercial 4

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Pricing

PrivacyPolicy

TermsOfService

Plans

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Overlay

Overlay

Source (apis.yml)

aid: fundamental-research-labs
name: Fundamental Research Labs
description: Fundamental Research Labs (formerly Altera) is an applied AI research company building autonomous, collaborative
  AI agents, founded by researchers from MIT EECS, the Stanford NLP Group, Google X, and Citadel and backed by Andreessen
  Horowitz and Prosus. Its flagship product, Shortcut, is an AI analyst for Excel that turns natural-language prompts into
  full spreadsheet models — LBOs, DCFs, three-statement models, waterfalls — and ships a web app, desktop app, Excel and Google
  Sheets plugins, a ShortcutXL terminal agent (CLI), and a Platform API. The Shortcut Platform API lets teams submit spreadsheet-automation
  jobs, poll status, download generated workbooks, upload context files, list agent skills, and export organization usage
  data programmatically using API-key bearer authentication.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/fundamental-research-labs/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- prosus-ventures
- andreessen-horowitz
x-tier: enriched
x-tier-reason: has-public-api
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: true
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: high
  source:
  - openapi
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: false
  gated: none
  gated_source:
  - onboarding
  label: Freemium · Self-serve signup
  confidence: high
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  - rate-limits
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
specificationVersion: '0.23'
image: https://shortcut.ai/og-image.png
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-19'
tags:
- Company
- Artificial Intelligence
- Spreadsheets
- Excel
- Financial Modeling
- Agents
- Automation
- Productivity
- Data Analysis
tags_raw:
- Company
- Ai
- Artificial Intelligence
- Spreadsheets
- Excel
- Financial Modeling
- Agents
- Automation
- Productivity
- Data Analysis
apis:
- aid: fundamental-research-labs:fundamental-research-labs-authentication-api
  name: Fundamental Research Labs Authentication API
  description: API key authentication and verification
  humanURL: https://shortcut.ai/docs/platform-api
  baseURL: https://api.shortcut.ai
  tags:
  - Authentication
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/fundamental-research-labs-authentication-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://shortcut.ai/docs/platform-api
  - type: InteractiveDocumentation
    url: https://api.shortcut.ai/api/spreadsheets/docs
- aid: fundamental-research-labs:fundamental-research-labs-spreadsheets-api
  name: Fundamental Research Labs Spreadsheets API
  description: Spreadsheet processing and automation endpoints
  humanURL: https://shortcut.ai/docs/platform-api
  baseURL: https://api.shortcut.ai
  tags:
  - Spreadsheets
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/fundamental-research-labs-spreadsheets-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://shortcut.ai/docs/platform-api
  - type: InteractiveDocumentation
    url: https://api.shortcut.ai/api/spreadsheets/docs
- aid: fundamental-research-labs:fundamental-research-labs-usage-api
  name: Fundamental Research Labs Usage API
  description: Export team usage metrics for reporting, finance, and internal analytics. Usage Metrics in Shortcut provides
    a prefilled request with your team_id; use this reference to customize date range, format, or grouping.
  humanURL: https://shortcut.ai/docs/platform-api
  baseURL: https://api.shortcut.ai
  tags:
  - Usage
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/fundamental-research-labs-usage-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://shortcut.ai/docs/platform-api
  - type: InteractiveDocumentation
    url: https://api.shortcut.ai/api/spreadsheets/docs
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
common:
- type: PostmanWorkspace
  url: https://www.postman.com/kinlaneapi/fundamental-research-labs/overview
- type: Website
  url: https://fundamentalresearchlabs.ai
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://shortcut.ai/docs
- type: Documentation
  url: https://shortcut.ai/docs
- type: APIReference
  url: https://shortcut.ai/docs/platform-api
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://shortcut.ai/docs/platform-api
- type: Pricing
  url: https://shortcut.ai/pricing
- type: SignUp
  url: https://shortcut.ai/shortcut
- type: Blog
  url: https://shortcut.ai/blog
- type: Support
  url: https://shortcut.ai/support
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://shortcut.ai/privacy/policy
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://shortcut.ai/terms
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/fundamental-research-labs
- type: Compliance
  url: https://shortcut.ai/pricing
- type: OpenAPI
  url: openapi/_original/fundamental-research-labs-openapi-original.json
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/fundamental-research-labs-authentication.yml
- type: Packages
  url: packages/fundamental-research-labs-packages.yml
- type: CLI
  url: cli/fundamental-research-labs-cli.yml
- type: X-MCPServerCandidate
  url: mcp/fundamental-research-labs-mcp.yml
  note: 'Renamed from MCPServer 2026-09-03 (roadmap#247): the manifest self-describes as status: candidate — a tool list derived
    from the published API contracts, not an existing server. The scorer already read the manifest and reported mcp_server
    correctly; the MCPServer type was crediting the artifact-type surfaces with a server that does not exist.'
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/fundamental-research-labs-llms.txt
- type: Overlay
  url: overlays/fundamental-research-labs-shortcut-overlay.yaml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/fundamental-research-labs-conformance.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
  url: errors/fundamental-research-labs-problem-types.yml
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/fundamental-research-labs-lifecycle.yml
- type: Conventions
  url: conventions/fundamental-research-labs-conventions.yml
- type: DataModel
  url: data-model/fundamental-research-labs-data-model.yml
- type: Webhooks
  url: asyncapi/fundamental-research-labs-webhooks.yml
- type: ChangeLog
  url: changelog/fundamental-research-labs-changelog.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/fundamental-research-labs-rate-limits.yml
- type: Plans
  url: plans/fundamental-research-labs-plans.yml
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/fundamental-research-labs-agentic-access.yml
- type: AgentSkill
  url: skills/_index.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/fundamental-research-labs-domain-security.yml
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-19'
  status: backfilled
  pass: local-v1
  note: backfilled from .gitignore signal + verified work evidence

Fundamental Research Labs API — frequently asked questions

Does Fundamental Research Labs have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 3 APIs from Fundamental Research Labs, including Fundamental Research Labs Authentication API, Fundamental Research Labs Spreadsheets API and Fundamental Research Labs Usage API.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the Fundamental Research Labs API?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 3 OpenAPI specifications for Fundamental Research Labs, each linked for download from this page.

How do I authenticate with the Fundamental Research Labs API?

Fundamental Research Labs uses bearer-token authentication (apiKey/http · 2 schemes). The details are profiled on APIs.io as Fundamental Research Labs Authentication.

How much does the Fundamental Research Labs API cost?

Fundamental Research Labs publishes its prices; its Free plan is $0/ month as of 2026-10-28. APIs.io lists 4 pricing plans for Fundamental Research Labs, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the Fundamental Research Labs API ready for AI agents?

Fundamental Research Labs has a Kin Score of 64.4 out of 100 (strong) and an Agent Readiness score of 31.4 (agent-ready), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

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