Formant

aid: formant
name: Formant
description: >-
  Formant is a San Francisco–based robotics and physical-operations cloud
  platform that lets companies operate fleets of robots and advanced
  connected devices. The Formant software platform implements workflows for
  remote monitoring, intervention requests, data management, teleoperation,
  tech-support investigations, and business analysis, and exposes an
  extensible cloud infrastructure that can be built upon to create custom
  robot management experiences. The product surface spans an on-robot
  Formant Agent (ingesting telemetry from ROS / ROS2 / non-ROS sources via
  configurable adapters), a REST Admin API at `api.formant.io/v1/admin`, a
  Python package (`pip install formant`) that bundles both a Cloud SDK
  (query and ingest data programmatically) and an Agent SDK (post telemetry,
  handle commands, drive teleoperation from robot-side Python), a Data SDK
  for JavaScript/TypeScript that powers custom views, modules, and embedded
  experiences, the `fctl` command-line tool for SSH / SCP / port-forwarding
  over Formant's peer-to-peer connection, and Formant Metaphysics — an
  AI-powered incident-management layer that automates alarm triage,
  predictive maintenance, and SOP-driven investigations across SCADA,
  Snowflake, Slack, and Teams. The API is organized around devices, fleets,
  streams, views, commands, events, annotations, intervention requests,
  files, key-value storage, roles, users, schedules, analytics, and
  presence/online monitoring. Formant's GitHub organization (FormantIO)
  publishes the ROS / ROS2 adapter, a Boston Dynamics Spot adapter, an
  ONVIF camera adapter, a P2P adapter, Cradlepoint adapter, the Toolkit
  meta-repo for building on Formant APIs, the 3D viewer module, custom
  module boilerplate, Data SDK examples for Node.js and React Native, a
  Homebrew tap for `fctl`, and a public JSON-schema repo for module
  configuration.
image: https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/formant/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-05-25'
modified: '2026-05-25'
specificationVersion: '0.20'
tags:
  - Robotics
  - Robot Fleet Management
  - Teleoperation
  - Observability
  - Telemetry
  - ROS
  - ROS2
  - Edge Devices
  - Physical Operations
  - Incident Management
  - Industrial AI
  - SCADA
  - Predictive Maintenance
  - Remote Monitoring
  - Embedded Devices
kind: contract
position: Consuming
access: 3rd-Party
apis:
  - aid: formant:formant-admin-api
    name: Formant Admin API
    description: >-
      Formant's primary REST API, served from `https://api.formant.io/v1/admin`.
      Covers devices, fleets, streams, views, teleop views, commands and command
      templates, schedules, events and custom events, annotations and annotation
      templates, files (multipart begin/complete upload), key-value storage,
      intervention requests and responses, document sets, insights, roles,
      users, service accounts, tag templates, task summaries and task-summary
      formats, sharing tokens, analytics (aggregates, datapoints, table/columns,
      task reports), presence and online-device monitoring, usage metrics, and
      stream current-value queries. Endpoints follow a `<resource>controller`
      naming convention (e.g. `devicecontrollerquery`, `eventcontrollerhistogram`,
      `fleetcontrollergetdevices`). The reference is rendered as ReadMe-hosted
      OpenAPI pages but Formant does not publish a single downloadable
      OpenAPI spec file.
    humanURL: https://docs.formant.io/reference
    baseURL: https://api.formant.io/v1/admin
    tags:
      - Admin
      - Devices
      - Fleets
      - Streams
      - Events
      - Commands
      - Teleoperation
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/devicecontrollerpost
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/fleetcontrollerlist
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/eventcontrollerquery
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/commandcontrollerpost
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/viewcontrollerpost
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/interventionrequestcontrollerpost
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/filecontrollerbeginupload
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/analyticscontrollerlistaggregates
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/authcontrollerlogin
      - type: Authentication
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/authcontrollerlogin
      - type: ServiceAccount
        url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/getting-started-create-a-service-account
  - aid: formant:formant-agent-sdk
    name: Formant Agent SDK
    description: >-
      Python client embedded in the `formant` PyPI package (`pip install formant`,
      `from formant.sdk.agent.v1 import Client`). Runs on-robot alongside the
      Formant agent and exposes typed ingestion methods — `post_image`,
      `post_numeric`, `post_numericset`, `post_bitset`, `post_text`,
      `post_geolocation`, `post_battery`, `post_json` — plus
      `register_command_request_callback` / `send_command_response` for
      bidirectional command handling and teleoperation hooks. Stream creation is
      implicit on first ingest. Use it when you are not on ROS and want to drive
      Formant from robot-side Python, or when you want finer-grained control than
      the ROS adapter provides.
    humanURL: https://docs.formant.io/reference/agent-sdk-installation-and-overview
    tags:
      - SDK
      - Agent
      - Python
      - Telemetry
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/agent-sdk-installation-and-overview
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/agent-sdk-reference
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/agent-sdk-protos
      - type: SDK
        url: https://pypi.org/project/formant/
  - aid: formant:formant-cloud-sdk
    name: Formant Cloud SDK
    description: >-
      Python client embedded in the `formant` PyPI package
      (`from formant.sdk.cloud.v1 import Client`). Wraps the Admin API for
      programmatic query and ingest of datapoints against your Formant
      organization without going through the agent. Authentication uses
      `FORMANT_EMAIL` / `FORMANT_PASSWORD` environment variables, or service
      account credentials generated via the web app or `fctl`.
    humanURL: https://docs.formant.io/reference/cloud-sdk-installation-and-overview
    tags:
      - SDK
      - Cloud
      - Python
      - Data Ingestion
      - Data Query
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/cloud-sdk-installation-and-overview
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/cloud-sdk-reference
      - type: SDK
        url: https://pypi.org/project/formant/
  - aid: formant:formant-data-sdk
    name: Formant Data SDK (JavaScript / TypeScript)
    description: >-
      Browser- and Node-side JavaScript / TypeScript SDK for building custom
      modules, custom views, and embedded experiences against Formant's
      real-time and historical data planes. Powers the UI Toolkit, custom 3D
      viewer layers, real-time video modules, and intermodule communication.
      Reference implementations include FormantMobile (React Native),
      node-data-sdk (Node.js), realtime-sdk-template / -guide / -video-demo,
      view-embed-react-wrapper, and the broader FormantIO/toolkit meta-repo.
    humanURL: https://docs.formant.io/reference/data-sdk-1
    tags:
      - SDK
      - JavaScript
      - TypeScript
      - Realtime
      - Custom Modules
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/data-sdk-1
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/data-sdk-tour
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/ui-toolkit
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/web-toolkit-overview
      - type: SourceCode
        url: https://github.com/FormantIO/toolkit
      - type: SourceCode
        url: https://github.com/FormantIO/node-data-sdk
      - type: SourceCode
        url: https://github.com/FormantIO/FormantMobile
common:
  - type: Portal
    url: https://formant.io
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.formant.io
  - type: Documentation
    name: API & SDK Reference
    url: https://docs.formant.io/reference
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/getting-started-overview
  - type: Documentation
    name: System Requirements
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/system-requirements
  - type: Documentation
    name: Formant Agent
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/the-formant-agent
  - type: Documentation
    name: Adapters Overview
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/adapters
  - type: Documentation
    name: ROS 2 Adapter
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/ros-2-adapter
  - type: Documentation
    name: Cloud SDK
    url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/cloud-sdk-installation-and-overview
  - type: Documentation
    name: Agent SDK
    url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/agent-sdk-installation-and-overview
  - type: Documentation
    name: Data SDK
    url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/data-sdk-1
  - type: Documentation
    name: fctl CLI Overview
    url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/fctl-overview-and-installation
  - type: Documentation
    name: Teleoperation Getting Started
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/getting-started-teleoperation
  - type: Documentation
    name: Advanced Teleoperation
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/advanced-teleoperation-introduction
  - type: Documentation
    name: Fleet Observability
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/fleet-observability
  - type: Documentation
    name: Incident Management
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/incident-management
  - type: Documentation
    name: Analytics
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/analytics
  - type: Documentation
    name: Annotations
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/annotations
  - type: Documentation
    name: Embedded Views
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/embedded-views
  - type: Documentation
    name: Integrations Overview
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/integrations-overview
  - type: Documentation
    name: Configure Google SSO
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/configure-google-sso
  - type: Documentation
    name: Configure OIDC SSO
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/configure-openid-connect-oidc-sso
  - type: Documentation
    name: Send Events to PagerDuty
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/send-events-to-pagerduty
  - type: Documentation
    name: Send Events to Slack
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/send-events-to-slack
  - type: Documentation
    name: Trigger Webhooks from Events
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/trigger-webhooks-from-events
  - type: Documentation
    name: SDK Versions, Distributions, Changelogs and Licensing
    url: https://docs.formant.io/docs/sdk-versions-distributions-changelogs-and-licensing
  - type: Recipes
    url: https://docs.formant.io/recipes
  - type: ChangeLog
    url: https://docs.formant.io/changelog
  - type: Roadmap
    url: https://feedback.formant.io/feedback
  - type: AIIndex
    name: llms.txt
    url: https://docs.formant.io/llms.txt
  - type: SignUp
    url: https://app.formant.io/signup
  - type: SignIn
    url: https://app.formant.io
  - type: GitHubOrganization
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO
  - type: SourceCode
    name: Software releases & development resources
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/formant
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/toolkit — open libraries and docs for building on Formant APIs
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/toolkit
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/ros2-adapter
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/ros2-adapter
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/formant-ros — ROS 1 adapter
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/formant-ros
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/adapters — all Formant agent adapters
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/adapters
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/formant-spot-adapter — Boston Dynamics Spot adapter
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/formant-spot-adapter
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/formant-onvif-adapter — ONVIF camera adapter
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/formant-onvif-adapter
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/formant-p2p-adapter
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/formant-p2p-adapter
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/Cradlepoint_adapter
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/Cradlepoint_adapter
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/ping-adapter
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/ping-adapter
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/formant-proxy-adapter
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/formant-proxy-adapter
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/formant-speak-robot-adapter
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/formant-speak-robot-adapter
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/formant-agent-plugins
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/formant-agent-plugins
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/3d-viewer-module
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/3d-viewer-module
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/custom-module-boilerplate
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/custom-module-boilerplate
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/build-a-module — module-building example
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/build-a-module
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/node-data-sdk — Data SDK usage in Node.js
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/node-data-sdk
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/FormantMobile — React Native example
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/FormantMobile
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/realtime-sdk-template
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/realtime-sdk-template
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/realtime-sdk-guide
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/realtime-sdk-guide
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/realtime-video-demo
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/realtime-video-demo
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/view-embed-react-wrapper
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/view-embed-react-wrapper
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/universe-localization-example
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/universe-localization-example
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/schemas — JSON schemas used by Formant modules
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/schemas
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/homebrew-formant — Homebrew tap for fctl
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/homebrew-formant
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/OfflineCommands
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/OfflineCommands
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/dataviz-chatgpt — ChatGPT prompts for Formant dataviz
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/dataviz-chatgpt
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/formant-institutional-skills — Formant skills for Claude Code
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/formant-institutional-skills
  - type: SourceCode
    name: FormantIO/formant-style-guide — Formant Brand Style Guide 2026
    url: https://github.com/FormantIO/formant-style-guide
  - type: SDK
    name: Python (PyPI)
    url: https://pypi.org/project/formant/
  - type: Tool
    name: fctl CLI
    url: https://docs.formant.io/reference/fctl-overview-and-installation
  - type: SignUp
    url: https://app.formant.io/signup
  - type: Pricing
    url: https://formant.io/pricing
  - type: Blog
    name: Notes
    url: https://formant.io/notes
  - type: Podcast
    url: https://www.youtube.com/@formantinc/podcasts
  - type: LinkedIn
    url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/formant
  - type: Twitter
    url: https://twitter.com/formantio
  - type: YouTube
    url: https://www.youtube.com/@formantinc
  - type: Features
    data:
      - REST Admin API at `https://api.formant.io/v1/admin` covering devices, fleets, streams, views, commands, events, annotations, files, intervention requests, key-value storage, roles, users, schedules, analytics, presence/online monitoring, and usage metrics
      - Formant Agent — on-robot daemon with adapters for ROS, ROS 2, Boston Dynamics Spot, ONVIF cameras, Cradlepoint, ZeroMQ, JSON decomposition, and ROS Service
      - Python package (`pip install formant`) bundling both Cloud SDK and Agent SDK clients
      - Cloud SDK — programmatic ingest and query of Formant datapoints from Python (`formant.sdk.cloud.v1.Client`)
      - Agent SDK — on-robot Python client with typed ingestion (`post_numeric`, `post_image`, `post_geolocation`, `post_json`, …) and command-handler callbacks
      - Data SDK — JavaScript/TypeScript SDK for custom modules, custom views, embedded views, real-time video, and intermodule communication
      - UI Toolkit and Web Toolkit for building custom views and dashboards
      - 3D Scene module with custom-layer extensibility (open-source 3d-viewer-module)
      - Teleoperation — WebRTC-backed real-time control with command buttons, marker arrays, scene module, and multi-image streaming
      - Custom modules via `custom-module-boilerplate` and `build-a-module`
      - Embedded Views with auth-token generation (`generate-auth-token-for-embedded-view`)
      - Intervention Requests — human-in-the-loop intervention workflow with paired request / response resources
      - Annotations — templated, queryable annotations across telemetry streams with spreadsheet inspection
      - Task Summaries and Task Summary Formats for mission and task reporting
      - Insights — stored AI-driven insights and insight results
      - Suggestion API — AI-engine document store, nearest-document search, video frame extraction
      - Custom Events and batch event ingestion
      - Event histograms, severity / device / type aggregations, and event export to Google Sheets
      - File API with begin/complete multipart upload, signed S3 URLs, query and tag updates
      - Key-Value Storage for per-organization persistent state
      - Roles and Service Accounts with administrator, operator, viewer, and device authorization levels
      - SSO via Google and generic OIDC; user invitation, refresh, and external-token login flows
      - Schedules — cron-style scheduling of command templates against fleets
      - Sharing tokens — paginated query of external share links
      - Analytics — aggregate queries, table/column introspection, datapoint query, task reports, and custom SQL
      - Usage Metrics — programmatic consumption reporting
      - Online-device / presence monitoring with `lastSeen` and stream counts (v1 + v2)
      - Tag Templates and bulk tag application across devices and fleets
      - Document Sets — grouped organizational documents for AI / SOP retrieval
      - Sigma analytics embed-URL generation
      - PagerDuty, Slack, Google Sheets, SMS, and arbitrary webhook integrations
      - White-labeled robotics interface and custom-theme support
      - fctl CLI for SSH, SCP, port-forwarding, and remote shell over Formant's peer-to-peer connection
      - Bulk and automated device provisioning with re-provisioning support
      - Configuration templates applied across device groups
      - Audit logs for organizational changes
      - Formant Metaphysics — AI incident-management platform with autonomous alarm triage, predictive maintenance, and SOP-driven investigations across SCADA, Snowflake, Slack, and Teams
      - llms.txt index for AI-agent consumption of all docs and OpenAPI endpoints
    sources:
      - https://docs.formant.io/reference
      - https://docs.formant.io/llms.txt
      - https://docs.formant.io
      - https://github.com/FormantIO
      - https://formant.io
    updated: '2026-05-25'
  - type: Integrations
    data:
      - ROS 1
      - ROS 2
      - Boston Dynamics Spot
      - ONVIF cameras
      - Cradlepoint cellular routers
      - Jetson / JetBot
      - Universal Robots
      - Foxglove Studio (forked viewer)
      - Webviz (forked viewer)
      - ZeroMQ
      - JSON / file-tail / directory-watch ingestion
      - PagerDuty
      - Slack
      - Microsoft Teams
      - Google Workspace (Sheets, SSO)
      - Generic OIDC SSO
      - AWS S3 export
      - Google Cloud Platform export
      - Snowflake
      - SCADA systems
      - Sigma Computing (embed URL)
      - SMS / event-triggered SMS
      - Generic webhooks
    sources:
      - https://docs.formant.io
      - https://github.com/FormantIO
    updated: '2026-05-25'
  - type: Solutions
    data:
      - Fleet observability for service, delivery, and industrial robotics
      - Robot teleoperation and remote intervention
      - Multi-device data ingestion, storage, and replay (ROS bag–style)
      - White-labeled robot management portals for OEMs
      - Incident management and AI alarm triage for physical operations
      - Predictive maintenance and equipment-lifecycle extension
      - Mission planning and task-summary reporting
      - Compliance audit trails for fleet operations
      - Embedded operator views inside third-party applications
      - Field-service investigation workflows with AI-suggested documents
    sources:
      - https://formant.io
      - https://docs.formant.io
    updated: '2026-05-25'
  - type: Customers
    data:
      - Tier 1 semiconductor OEMs (aggregated)
      - Hardware OEMs (aggregated)
      - Service robotics fleet operators
      - Industrial automation and manufacturing operators
    sources:
      - https://formant.io
    updated: '2026-05-25'
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: [email protected]
    X: apievangelist
    url: https://apievangelist.com