# Perishable

> Ship AI features without shipping your API keys. Perishable is a self-hosted Node proxy plus a browser SDK that lets client-side apps call OpenAI-compatible APIs without exposing the upstream key. Built-in fingerprinting, entropy collection, short-lived JWT sessions, per-fingerprint rate limiting.

Perishable is a Skelf-Research project. MIT licensed. Published on npm as `perishable`. Source at https://github.com/Skelf-Research/perishable.

## What it actually is

- A Node process. Start with `npx perishable-proxy`, or embed via `new server.PerishableServer({…})`.
- A browser SDK (`client.PerishableOpenAI`) that collects entropy, requests a session, refreshes it before expiry.
- An OpenAI-compatible request surface. Works with OpenAI, Anthropic (via `OPENAI_BASE_URL`), OpenRouter, Ollama.

## What it is not

- Not a hosted service. There is no Perishable cloud.
- Not an observability or analytics layer.
- Not a per-user auth system.
- Not bot-proof — it raises the cost of casual abuse, not the cost of a determined attacker.

## Docs

- [Home](https://perishable.skelfresearch.com/)
- [About](https://perishable.skelfresearch.com/about)
- [Notes](https://perishable.skelfresearch.com/blog)
- [Compare: Portkey](https://perishable.skelfresearch.com/compare/portkey)
- [Compare: Cloudflare AI Gateway](https://perishable.skelfresearch.com/compare/cloudflare-ai-gateway)
- [Full docs](https://docs.skelfresearch.com/perishable/)
- [Source](https://github.com/Skelf-Research/perishable)
- [npm](https://www.npmjs.com/package/perishable)
- [llms-full.txt](https://perishable.skelfresearch.com/llms-full.txt)