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Revision as of 16:11, 24 October 2026

The SimTX account service is the HTTPS JSON API at https://auth.simtx.net. It signs users in, issues credentials, lists the game servers that are online, and exchanges a credential for the single-use game ticket that a game server accepts during the handshake. It also serves a small set of public, unauthenticated endpoints.

A client that only receives does not need the account service at all, apart from discovering a server address. A client that transmits or publishes to the extension catalog does.

Endpoint summary

Method Path Authentication Purpose
POST /api/v1/device/authorizations None Start a device login
POST /api/v1/device/token None Poll for credentials
POST /api/v1/device/refresh None Rotate the credential pair
GET /api/v1/servers Bearer List online game servers
POST /api/v1/game-tickets Bearer Obtain a game ticket
GET /api/v1/status None Service status
GET /api/v1/profiles None Search public profiles
GET /api/v1/profiles/{handle} None Read one public profile
GET /api/v1/releases None Published transmitter releases
GET /downloads/transmitter-update.properties None Update manifest
GET /downloads/{filename} None Release download
GET /api/v1/network-test/ping None Latency probe
POST /api/v1/network-test/upload None Upload probe

Endpoints under /api/v1/me/, /api/v1/auth/ and the device approval endpoints (/api/v1/device/verify, /api/v1/device/deny, GET /api/v1/device/authorizations/{userCode}) belong to the account website. They require a browser session cookie and a CSRF token and do not accept bearer credentials. Administrative and internal endpoints are not part of the public API and are not documented here.

Conventions

  • Transport. HTTPS only. Request and response bodies are application/json (UTF-8) unless stated otherwise. Timestamps are ISO-8601 strings in UTC, for example 2026-10-24T12:00:00Z.
  • Field names are camelCase. Unknown response fields may be added in future and must be ignored by clients.
  • Caching. Every /api/ response carries Cache-Control: no-store.
  • Timeouts. The official client uses a 5 second connect timeout and a 10 second request timeout. Those values are a sensible default.
  • Request IDs. A client may send an X-Request-ID header matching [A-Za-z0-9._-]{8,64}. The service echoes it in the response header and in error bodies. Without one, the service generates a UUID. Quote it when reporting a problem.

Authentication

Authenticated endpoints read a bearer credential from the Authorization header. The header must begin with exactly Bearer (capital B, one space).

GET /api/v1/servers HTTP/1.1
Host: auth.simtx.net
Authorization: Bearer stx_at1_0f3c…

Two kinds of credential are accepted as a bearer:

  • an access credential obtained through device login, or
  • a personal credential created by the user on the account website. It is intended for bots, scripts and other headless software. The user chooses its scopes and expiry, and the secret is displayed once.

Credential formats

All SimTX credentials are opaque strings: a fixed prefix followed by 64 lowercase hexadecimal characters (32 random bytes). They are not JWTs and contain no readable data. A client must store them as given and must never parse them.

Prefix Credential Lifetime Used for
stx_dc1_ Device code 10 minutes Polling /api/v1/device/token
stx_at1_ Access credential 10 minutes Bearer for authenticated endpoints
stx_rt1_ Refresh credential 30 days idle, 180 days absolute; rotates on every use /api/v1/device/refresh
stx_pc1_ Personal credential Chosen by the user, at most 1 year Bearer for authenticated endpoints
stx_gt1_ Game ticket 60 seconds, single use The game server handshake

A user code (shown to the person signing in) has the form ABCD-EF23: eight characters from the alphabet ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ23456789, with a hyphen after the fourth. The alphabet omits I, O, 0 and 1, so nobody has to wonder which one they are looking at.

Storing credentials

  • Keep the access credential in memory only. It expires after ten minutes in any case.
  • Persist the refresh credential (or a personal credential) in the operating system's credential store, such as Keychain, Windows Credential Manager or Secret Service.
  • There is no client-side logout endpoint. Signing out means deleting the stored refresh credential. Users revoke devices and personal credentials on the account website.
  • Never send an access, refresh or personal credential to a game server. Game servers only ever see game tickets.

Errors

Every error response has the same JSON body:

{
  "code": "credential_invalid",
  "message": "The access credential is invalid or expired",
  "fieldErrors": {},
  "requestId": "3d7f0c1e-5b2a-4a8e-9a77-1f0f6f5d2b10"
}
Field Type Description
code string Stable, machine-readable error code. Branch on this.
message string Human-readable English text. May change; do not parse.
fieldErrors object Additional string values keyed by name. For example, device polling reports the required poll interval as fieldErrors.interval.
requestId string The request ID. See Conventions.

Common error codes

HTTP code Meaning
401 credential_missing No Authorization header, or it does not start with Bearer .
401 credential_invalid The bearer credential is unknown, expired, revoked, or belongs to an account that is not active. Refresh once and retry; if that fails, sign in again.
400 scope_invalid A requested scope is not a known permission.
400 ticket_request_invalid See Game tickets.
400 authorization_pending, slow_down, expired_token, access_denied, invalid_grant Device polling states. See Device login.
401 invalid_grant, refresh_reuse_detected Refresh failures. See Device login.
404 profile_not_found, release_artifact_not_found, release_manifest_unavailable The requested public resource does not exist.
429 rate_limited A rate-limit bucket is exhausted. See below.
500 internal_error Unexpected server failure. Retry later with backoff.

Rate limits

Rate limits are counted per client IP address, per bucket, in fixed one-minute windows aligned to the UTC minute. A request over the limit receives 429 with code rate_limited. No Retry-After header is sent, so wait for the next minute boundary.

Bucket Endpoint(s) Requests per minute
device-create POST /api/v1/device/authorizations 20
device-poll POST /api/v1/device/token 120
device-refresh POST /api/v1/device/refresh 120
server-directory GET /api/v1/servers 120
game-ticket POST /api/v1/game-tickets 120
public-directory GET /api/v1/profiles 60
public-profile GET /api/v1/profiles/{handle} 120
public-releases GET /api/v1/releases 120
release-manifest GET /downloads/transmitter-update.properties 240
release-download GET /downloads/{filename} 240
network-test-ping GET /api/v1/network-test/ping 60
network-test-upload POST /api/v1/network-test/upload 144

GET /api/v1/status is not rate limited.

See also

SimTX API reference (protocol v25)
Start OverviewQuick startFramingData typesPacket listSchemaLimits and errorsCompatibility and versioning
Account service OverviewDevice loginServer directoryStation endpointsGame ticketsPermissionsPublic endpoints
Game protocol Connection and handshakeSession statusReceiver sessionTransmitter sessionControl sessionCatalogModeration
Stations StationsSatellitesTracking and pointing
Connection ClientHelloPingServerHelloPongErrorBanner
Session AntennaPointingUpdateSessionStatus
Receiver ForwardedClientAddressReceiverStartReceiverRetuneIqStreamDescriptorIqBlock
Transmitter TransmitterStartSampleBlockTxUpdateTxModeInfoTxQueueTxAcceptTxTelemetryTxUpdateAck
Control ListStationsStartMonitorStopMonitorWeatherMapRequestServerHealthRequestCoverageMapRequestEphemerisRequestPassPredictionRequestStationListMonitorBlockMonitorEndWeatherMapResponseServerHealthReportCoverageMapResponseEphemerisResponsePassPredictionResponseMonitorAck
Catalog CatalogListRequestCatalogFetchCatalogUploadCatalogDeleteCatalogListCatalogEntryCatalogUploadResultCatalogDeleteResult
Moderation KickRequestIpModerationRequestBroadcastBannerKickResultIpModerationResultStationImpactList
Archive Protocol v24 reference