APIPod

Build, Deploy, and publish AI Services with Ease

APIPod is the way for building and deploying AI services.
Combining the developer experience of FastAPI with the power of Serverless GPU computing.

Why APIPod • Installation • Quick Start • Deployment

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Why APIPod?

Building AI services is complex: file handling, long-running inference, job queues, deployment, scaling, and hosting provider choices all create friction at every step.

APIPod solves this by standardizing the entire stack.

🚀 Highlights

1. Write Powerful APIs Instantly: Built on top of FastAPI, it feels familiar but comes with batteries included for AI services.
2. Standardized I/O: Painless handling of Images, Audio, and Video via MediaToolkit.
3. Automatic packaging: The package can configure docker and deployment for you. No Cuda hell; the package knows compatible options.
4. Streamlined Deployment: Deploy as a standard container or to serverless providers (Socaity.ai or RunPod) with zero configuration changes. Auth included.
5. Native SDK: Built-in support for Asynchronous Job Queues, polling & and progress tracking via fastSDK

Installation

pip install apipod

Quick Start

1. Create your Service

Zero-Hassle Migration: Replacing FastAPI with APIPod gives you instant access to all APIPod capablities..

from apipod import APIPod, ImageFile

# 1. Initialize APIPod (Drop-in replacement for FastAPI)
app = APIPod()

# 2. Define a standard endpoint (Synchronous)
@app.endpoint("/hello")
def hello(name: str):
    return f"Hello {name}!"

# 2. Use built-in media processing 
@app.endpoint("/process_image", queue_size=10)
def process_image(image: ImageFile):
    # APIPod handles the file upload/parsing automatically
    img_array = image.to_np_array()
    
    # ... run your AI model here ...
    
    return ImageFile().from_np_array(img_array)

# 4. Run the server
if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.start()

2. Run Locally

python main.py

Visit http://localhost:8000/docs to see your auto-generated Swagger UI.

Features in Depth

📁 Smart File Handling

Forget about parsing multipart/form-data, base64, or bytes. APIPod integrates with MediaToolkit to handle files as objects.

from apipod import AudioFile

@app.post("/transcribe")
def transcribe(audio: AudioFile):
    # Auto-converts URLs, bytes, or uploads to a usable object
    audio_data = audio.to_bytes()
    return {"transcription": "..."}

☁️ Serverless Routing

When deploying to serverless platforms like RunPod, standard web frameworks often fail because they lack the necessary routing logic for the platform's specific entry points. APIPod detects the environment and handles the routing automatically—no separate "handler" function required.

🔄 Scaling services, Asynchronous Jobs, Polling and Job Progress

Let's say you want to serve your service to many users or you have a long-running task. Usually you need to set-up a load-balancer, kubernetes, brokers and a lot of other complicated stuff. If you deploy to socaity / runpod this is taken care of for you. No Dev-Ops for you.

We allow you to emulate this behaviour for testing.

For long-running tasks (e.g., inference of a large model), you don't want to block the HTTP request. Often you want to be able to give a progress bar or updates about the current task to the user. This is what job progress is for. It allows you to communicate a progress percentage and a status message to your user.

1. Setup test environment for serverless (Job Queue):

   # Initialize with serverless compute on localhost to enable the local job queue
   app = APIPod(compute="serverless", provider="localhost")

2. Define Endpoint: Use @app.endpoint (or @app.post). It automatically becomes a background task when a queue is configured.

   @app.post("/generate", queue_size=50)
   def generate(job_progress: JobProgress, prompt: str):
       job_progress.set_status(0.1, "Initializing model...")
       # ... heavy computation ...
       job_progress.set_status(1.0, "Done!")
       return "Generation Complete"

   • Client: Receives a job_id immediately.
   • Server: Processes the task in the background.
   • SDK: Automatically polls for status and result.

3. Opt-out: If you want a standard synchronous endpoint even when queue is enabled:

   @app.endpoint("/ping", use_queue=False)
   def ping():
       return "pong"

Deployment

APIPod is designed to run anywhere by leveraging docker.

Build & configure • Deploy

Create & configure container

All you need to do is run:

apipod build 

This command creates the dockerfile for you, and select the correct docker template and cuda/cudnn versions and comes with ffmpeg installed.

• For most users this already creates a sufficient solution.
• However you are always free to create or customize the Dockerfile for your needs.

Requirements:

1. docker installed on your system.
2. Depending on your setup a cuda/cudnn installation

APIPod Configuration

APIPod provides a flexible deployment configuration that allows developers to:

• Run services locally for development
• Deploy via the Socaity orchestration platform
• Deploy directly to cloud providers
• Choose between serverless or dedicated compute

The configuration is controlled through a combination of:

• orchestrator
• compute
• provider
• region
• CPU/GPU

Orchestrator	Compute	Provider	Resulting Backend
socaity	dedicated	auto	FastAPI
socaity	dedicated	localhost	FastAPI + job queue (test mode)
socaity	dedicated	runpod	Celery backend (planned)
socaity	dedicated	scaleway	Celery backend (planned)
socaity	dedicated	azure	Celery backend (planned)
socaity	serverless	auto	RunPod router backend
socaity	serverless	localhost	FastAPI + job queue (test mode)
socaity	serverless	runpod	RunPod router backend
socaity	serverless	scaleway	❌ Not supported
socaity	serverless	azure	❌ Not supported
local / None	dedicated	localhost	FastAPI
local / None	dedicated	runpod	FastAPI
local / None	dedicated	scaleway	FastAPI
local / None	dedicated	azure	FastAPI
local / None	serverless	localhost	FastAPI + job queue
local / None	serverless	runpod	RunPod router backend
local / None	serverless	scaleway	❌ Not supported
local / None	serverless	azure	❌ Not supported
local / None	localhost	localhost	FastAPI

🔄 Queue Backend Support

APIPod supports multiple job queue backends to handle different deployment scenarios and scaling needs.

Available Backends

• None (default): Standard FastAPI behavior. No background jobs.

• Local Queue (local): In-memory job queue using threading.

  • Perfect for local development and single-instance deployments
  • No external dependencies required

Configuration

# Job queues are automatically enabled based on your configuration.
# For example, serverless + localhost enables a local job queue for testing:
app = APIPod(compute="serverless", provider="localhost")

# Or via environment variables
import os
os.environ["APIPOD_COMPUTE"] = "serverless"
os.environ["APIPOD_PROVIDER"] = "localhost"

app = APIPod()  # Uses environment config

Troubleshooting

You are always free to create or edit the Dockerfile for your needs. Depending on your OS, your machine or your project setup you might occur one of those issues:

• Build scripts fails
• You can't build the docker container.

In this cases don't
Advanced users can also configure or write the docker file for themselves

Deploy to socaity

Right after build you can deploy the service via the socaity.ai dashboard. This is the simplest option.

Deploy to runpod.

1. You will need to build the your docker image.
2. Push your image to your dockerhub repository.
3. Deploy on RunPod Serverless by using the runpod dashboard.
   • APIPod acts as the handler, managing job inputs/outputs compatible with RunPod's API.

Make sure that the environment variables are set to the following: APIPOD_COMPUTE="serverless" and APIPOD_PROVIDER="runpod"

Debugging APIPod serverless

You can configure your environment variables so that APIPod acts as if it were deployed on socaity.ai or on runpod.

# Orchestrator
ENV APIPOD_ORCHESTRATOR="local"    # Options: "local" (default), "socaity"

# Compute type
ENV APIPOD_COMPUTE="serverless"    # Options: "dedicated" (default), "serverless"

# Infrastructure provider
ENV APIPOD_PROVIDER="runpod"       # Options: "localhost" (default), "auto", "runpod", "scaleway", "azure"

Client SDK

While you can use curl or requests, our FastSDK makes interacting with APIPod services feel like calling native Python functions.

# The SDK handles authentication, file uploads, and result polling
# create a full working client stub 
create_sdk("https://localhost:8000", save_path="my_service.py")

# Import the client. It will have a method for each of your service endpoints including all parameters and its default values.
from my_service import awesome_client
mySDK = awesome_client()
mySDK.my_method(...)

# Blocks until the remote job is finished
result = task.get_result() 

Comparison

Feature	APIPod	FastAPI	Celery	Replicate/Cog
Setup Difficulty	⭐ Easy	⭐ Easy	⭐⭐⭐ Hard	⭐⭐ Medium
Async/Job Queue	✅ Built-in	❌ Manual	✅ Native	✅ Native
Serverless Ready	✅ Native	❌ Manual	❌ No	✅ Native
File Handling	✅ Standardized	⚠️ Manual	❌ Manual	❌ Manual
Router Support	✅	✅	❌	❌

Roadmap

• MCP protocol support.
• OpenAI-compatible default endpoints for LLMs
• Improve async support.

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Made with ❤️ by SocAIty