API Reference

The Shepherd API is a JSON REST API for building integrations on top of the Shepherd practice-management platform: labs, imaging, pharmacy, fintech, AI, and anything else a modern clinic plugs into.

Live API reference

Authoritative request and response schemas for every endpoint are published in the live Swagger UI at app.shepherd.vet/swagger/.

This site complements the Swagger with concepts, conventions, end-to-end tutorials, and code samples in curl, Python, C#, PHP, and JavaScript. The behavior it describes is tested against the live API, not only read from the schema.

At a glance

• Production: https://open-api.shepherd.vet/pav2/
• Sandbox: https://demo-open-api.shepherd.vet/pav2/
• Transport: POST with Content-Type: application/json for reads, searches, and creates; PUT for the five update endpoints.
• Auth: dual API-key headers (X-Integration-Public-Key, X-Integration-Private-Key) plus a per-clinic X-Clinic-Id (every endpoint except the clinic lookup).

Where to next

• Overview: environments, transport, and HTTP-client guidance.
• Authentication: API keys, the per-clinic scope model, and a working “hello world”.
• Conventions: pagination, embedding, sorting, date filters, and the collection envelope.
• Errors: status codes and the error body shapes.
• Rate limits: per-key limits, how requests are counted, querying remaining usage, and retry guidance.
• How we verify: how we test this reference against the live API with a purpose-built test harness, and what the latest run changed.

New to the platform? Start with the first-integration tutorial and you’ll be reading live data in about ten minutes.