Connections

Switchboard hosts the marketplace in every case. What varies is the connection, and it varies per capability: for each of catalog, rates, avails, order intake, decisions, and delivery reporting, a seller connects by push (you call us, or drop files), pull (we call an endpoint you host; the contract is published at Host your own API), console (humans), or queue. Mix freely: push avails by file while we pull orders into your order API. Delivery reporting also speaks the industry's own paper: station-generated EDI invoices and as-run log times land through the file interface and reconcile against orders.

The capability profile

Every seller declares a profile; the platform reads it, adapts, and degrades gracefully. Switchboard never calls a capability the profile does not advertise. The capability_profile is a first-class object: read it with GET /v1/me/capabilities, update it with PUT /v1/me/capabilities.

{
  "seller_id": "yourco",
  "conformance_level": 1,
  "transports": {
    "result_delivery": ["callback", "poll", "sqs"],
    "formats": ["json", "xlsx", "csv"]
  },
  "capabilities": {
    "realtime_availability": false,
    "counter_proposals": false,
    "reservation_hold": false,
    "pricing_modes": ["rate_card"]
  },
  "rate_management": {
    "mode": "frozen_quarterly",
    "refresh_cadence": "quarterly"
  },
  "sla": {
    "standard": {
      "min_lead_minutes": 2880,
      "max_decision_latency_seconds": 14400
    }
  }
}

Auth follows the direction. On push connections you authenticate to Switchboard with OAuth2 client credentials. On pull connections Switchboard authenticates to you: the standard ask is an OAuth2 client-credentials grant against your token endpoint, and an API key works where that is what your stack issues.

Buyer-side connections

Buyers connect the same way: webhooks or a shared queue for events, the API and MCP for transactions, and two rails that meet agencies where they already live. The email gateway accepts structured orders and documents from authorized senders and returns decisions the same way. EDI delivery pushes confirmed orders into agency systems of record (Prisma, Strata). These are the industry's existing rails: station systems generate EDI invoices, agency systems consume them, and Switchboard writes your confirmed orders into the same flow, so billing and reconciliation stay in the system your finance team already trusts. If your shop runs on Strata, Switchboard is designed to land orders exactly where your current ones land.