Prove the endpoint is yours

A short-lived partner token, obtained by exchanging your API key at POST /token. Send it as Authorization: Bearer <access_token>.

Tokens live for fifteen minutes by default and never for more than an hour. Mint one per batch of work, not one per request.

The token carries the workspace and the environment its key was issued for. You cannot change either by asking: the exchange ignores everything in the request body for exactly that reason.

It also carries the key's scopes (scope, a list). Every operation names a scope as x-maat-scope, and a token whose key lacks it is refused with 403 insufficient_scope, naming the scope. Scopes are fixed when a key is issued and are re-read from the key on every request, so a key narrowed today is narrowed on its next call — the token's scope is what the key held at exchange time, for your own reading, never what authorizes a request.

x-maat-scope is the floor, and on the quick-action operations it is not the whole requirement. PUT and DELETE /listings/{listing_id}/quick-actions/{template_key} carry rules:write, and additionally require pricing:write when template_key begins pricing. — the capability depends on the template in the path, because a cleaning fee changes what a guest pays and a minimum stay does not. The refusal is the same 403 insufficient_scope, naming pricing:write. The two READS apply the same requirement without erroring: GET /listings/{listing_id}/quick-actions still lists the pricing.* rows but withholds their applied state, and GET /listings/{listing_id}/rules omits the pricing rules entirely and reports pricing_withheld in warnings. These four are the only operations in this document whose requirement is not exactly their x-maat-scope, and each of them says so machine-readably: x-maat-scope-additional lists the second scope it can require and x-maat-scope-additional-when says what happens without it.

Never send it as a cookie or in a query string, and never store it — store the API key, mint tokens from it.