> For clean Markdown of any page, append .md to the page URL.
> For a complete documentation index, see https://developers.deepgram.com/guides/fundamentals/llms.txt.
> For AI client integration (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.), connect to the MCP server at https://developers.deepgram.com/_mcp/server.

# Fundamentals

## Docs

- [Make Your First API Request](https://developers.deepgram.com/guides/fundamentals/make-your-first-api-request.md): Follow these steps to get started with Deepgram and make your first request.
- [Authenticating](https://developers.deepgram.com/guides/fundamentals/authenticating.md): Learn how to authenticate with Deepgram's API.
- [Token-Based Auth](https://developers.deepgram.com/guides/fundamentals/token-based-authentication.md): Generates a temporary JSON Web Token (JWT) with a 30-second TTL (Time To Live) for Deepgram APIs.
- [Model Metadata](https://developers.deepgram.com/guides/fundamentals/model-metadata.md): Use the Models endpoint to determine which models you can access and returns metadata about those models.
- [Using Custom Add On Parameters with SDKs](https://developers.deepgram.com/guides/fundamentals/using-custom-parameters-sdks.md): Learn how to use custom add on parameters to set arbitrary key/value pairs with the Deepgram SDKs.
- [Tagging Your Usage Data](https://developers.deepgram.com/guides/fundamentals/tagging-your-usage-data.md): Tagging allows you to label your requests for grouping & filtering usage reports.