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Browser Trial

Visitors can use the public Chab homepage to try supported provider operations without creating an account. The browser trial starts as a cookie-backed web experience. An active trial can also issue short-lived guest trial API credentials for the documented guest /v1 surface; those credentials are not team API keys and cannot access team resources.

Starting a Trial

Open the Chab homepage to try web search or email verification. With a guest REST credential (API, CLI or local MCP) or hosted MCP browser consent you can use all tools: search, SEO, businesses, contacts, scraping, screenshots, conversion, language models, translation and research. A tool runs when it is available (see Service Health) and you have enough free credits.

The trial starts when you submit the first operation or create a guest API credential. Either action confirms the current Terms and Acceptable Use Policy for the guest trial, creates a guest identity cookie, and issues any eligible promotional trial credits for the visitor. The page attaches a per-start retry key to browser operations so a retry can return the same accepted operation instead of starting or spending twice.

Passive page views do not create a guest identity or reserve promotional credits. When trial starts are paused, the Start button is disabled and no guest identity or credit grant is created merely by submitting a first trial request. The page shows verification, pause and result status directly below the browser form, including on narrow screens. The homepage only displays the hosted MCP URL when accountless browser authorization is currently available.

Trial Credits

Trial operations use guest promotional credits only. They do not reserve paid team credits and do not create purchased-credit packages. The trial interface shows the available and held promotional credits for the current browser. Guest trial credits are one-off promotional value and do not refresh monthly.

Eligible new trials receive 50 one-off credits for 7 days; availability and limits can vary by location. Network, verification and usage limits still apply. Existing trials keep their original grant; updated policy acceptance or reconnecting does not refill a balance. Free credits can pause for a while when the daily free-use limit is reached; see Free credits and limits.

If free trial credits are switched off, temporarily paused, unavailable in the visitor's location, or used up, the page shows the matching free-mode error instead of starting provider work. Common errors include promotional_budget_exhausted, free_usage_paused, and free_credits_exhausted. The Start button for a selected tool is disabled when that tool cannot start right now. Free credits being available does not mean every tool can start.

Guest trial API credentials use the same guest promotional credits as the browser tool. Creating more credentials does not issue more value, and all credentials for the same guest share the same balance, caps, risk counters, and active-operation limit.

To prevent repeated free-grant creation, Chab also limits trial identities by the visitor's network (IPv4 /24 or IPv6 /48). A shared office or delegated network may therefore reach the trial-creation limit even when a particular person has not used Chab before. Signing in does not bypass the separate verified-free funding and risk checks.

API and CLI Credentials

Use the browser trial to create a guest trial API credential when you want to try Chab from a script or CLI without creating an account. Credential creation requires the active guest cookie, same-origin request headers, and any browser verification challenge Chab asks for.

Guest credentials expire after 24 hours, are limited to 3 active credentials per guest trial and 6 newly issued credentials per guest in a rolling 24-hour window, and return the secret only once. Revoke credentials from the same browser trial when you no longer need them.

The same guest credential can be used by the local MCP adapter advertised as chab mcp serve. Local MCP runs on your machine and maps the allowed MCP tools to the same REST /v1 guest credential routes; it shares the browser trial's promotional credit balance, idempotency behavior, verification passes, risk pauses, expiry, revocation, and account-claim boundary.

Guest credentials can start every tool listed in All tools. Read /v1/cli/compatibility for the current operation keys and /v1/health for the operations that can start now. Connected Mail, Drive and account administration require customer authorization.

The credential can also read /v1/me, read /v1/credits, poll status, fetch results, cancel active guest operations, upload/read its own conversion files, discover public LLM models, and read or download guest operation artifacts. It cannot list operation history or call team management, projects, billing settings, webhooks, connected accounts, paid-only routes, hosted MCP operation transport, or operations outside the guest allowlist.

If the browser trial is claimed into an account or expires, existing guest credentials stop working and /v1 returns signup_required, guest_credential_expired, or guest_credential_revoked depending on the credential state.

Creating an Account

You can keep using Chab as a guest through the browser, REST/CLI, local MCP, or hosted MCP, or create a free account at any time. Your agent can also sign you up with your email address (POST /v1/signup or the hosted MCP chab_sign_up tool); see Foundation Endpoints. Issuing another guest credential does not grant another trial balance.

If you create an account from the same browser while an active browser trial is still eligible, Chab claims that guest identity into your new personal team before email verification. Eligible remaining trial credits move to the account, active holds stay attached to the already accepted guest operations, and accepted guest-trial operations become visible in your signed-in operation history.

The claim happens once. After the guest identity is claimed, the old guest cookie cannot start new browser-trial work or read guest-scoped status and result URLs. Already accepted operations keep running and settle against their original holds. If unused held trial value is released before expiry, it returns to the claimed account rather than to the old guest cookie.

Email verification is still required for any available signup bonus. The signup bonus is evaluated separately from the claimed browser-trial value, so creating the account from a browser trial does not grant the signup bonus twice.

Verification and Pauses

Chab may require browser verification before a guest trial operation starts. When the page shows a verification prompt, complete it in the browser and retry the same operation. The retry sends the verification response to Chab and, on success, starts the operation without changing to paid funding.

Verification prompts, per-visitor daily caps, IP-prefix velocity pauses, and pauses because Chab's daily free-use limit is reached happen before operation creation, credit reservation, provider dispatch, or provider work. If verification is required but temporarily unavailable, Chab pauses the trial start instead of starting unchecked work. Repeated failed verification can pause browser-trial free use for 24 hours. Browser-issued API credentials share the same verification passes and pause counters as the issuing browser trial and any rotated credential for that guest. free_usage_paused and promotional_budget_exhausted may include Retry-After; wait for that delay before retrying. free_credits_exhausted means the current browser trial has no available guest promotional credits for the requested operation. Trial credits are one-off and issuing another credential does not refill them. Create a free account to get bonus credits.

Operation Status

Accepted browser-trial operations return the same operation lifecycle concepts as authenticated API starts:

  • queued
  • running
  • cancelling
  • succeeded
  • failed
  • cancelled
  • timed_out
  • expired

The page can poll the operation status, fetch retained inline results, retry a new request after active work is no longer running, or cancel an active browser-trial operation. If the browser refreshes, Chab restores the latest guest-trial operation for the current guest cookie so polling can continue. Cancellation releases unused guest promotional holds when no chargeable work has started.

Browser-trial operation status, result, and cancellation URLs are scoped to the same guest cookie that created the operation until the guest identity is claimed into an account. Guest trial API credentials for the same guest use the /v1/operations/... URLs returned by /v1 starts, not the browser trial URLs. After claim, signed-in operation history and result views for the claimed team can show accepted guest operations and download their retained artifacts. Another visitor, another guest cookie, an unrelated signed-in team, or a team bearer API key cannot use the guest browser URLs to read the guest operation.

Limits

The browser trial is intentionally smaller than authenticated API access:

  • search.web is capped to the trial result limit shown in the page.
  • Long search queries are rejected before the operation starts.
  • Standard free-operation starts are limited to 6 per minute per operation family; browser status/result polling has a separate read bucket and does not consume the start or credential-issuance buckets.
  • Only one browser-trial operation may be active at a time.
  • One-off callbacks are not supported.
  • Guest browser cookies cannot call /v1 operation routes unless the active browser trial first issues a guest trial API credential.
  • Expired, claimed, or previously claimed guest cookies cannot start another browser-trial operation.
  • Team API keys, CLI device credentials for verified accounts, project connections, team history, and team billing require a signed-in account.
  • Local MCP guest trial tools use guest credentials and the guest /v1 allowlist. When guest hosted MCP is enabled, a trial visitor can also authorize a hosted AI client from the trial browser. That connection has its own OAuth credentials, explicit operation consent, and the same promotional funding and risk limits; it is not the local REST bearer. If its browser proof expires, the client can still read or cancel work using its unexpired access token, but new starts and queued dispatch are paused. Reconnect the same client through a fresh browser challenge to keep access to that connection's prior results without another credit grant.

The guest credential already gives scriptable /v1 access. Create a free account or sign in for your own API keys, credits and limits, webhooks, project-connected data, and team operation history.