citrate-sdk-python

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The Python SDK and citrate CLI for the Citrate Network (chain 40204) — connect to the chain, deploy/run models, encrypt inference inputs, and call the inference gateway.

What it is

citrate-labs-sdk is the Python client for the Citrate distributed-AI network: a JSON-RPC CitrateClient, managers for compute/learning/staking/treasury/farming, an AES-GCM/HKDF crypto envelope for encrypted inference, an OpenAI-compatible GatewayClient, and a citrate command-line tool. Chain id 40204 is bound from a vendored federation-contract artifact and enforced at signing time (a hostile RPC cannot make you sign for another chain). It mirrors the canonical TypeScript SDK (@citratelabs/sdk) and may lag it.

Tokenomics are not yet determined; see docs.citrate.ai.

This release carries the r1006 address book (citrate-chain contracts/addresses/r1006/40204.json, genesis block 0xa3651a27…6cdd4). Two networks can share chain id 40204 (r1005 and r1006 do), so before the client or a manager sends a transaction, and before verify_wallet_address_on_chain trusts the factory, the SDK reads block 0 and raises WrongNetworkError (error_code="WRONG_NETWORK") unless its hash is that genesis. client.verify_network() runs the check up front. LiquidStakingPool is not in r1006 block 0, so StakingManager has no default address.

See the concepts in the docs: https://docs.citrate.ai. Depends on a running chain node (citrate-chain) and, for inference, the gateway (citrate-inference-gateway).

Prerequisites

python3 --version   # >= 3.10 (3.10/3.11/3.12 supported)
python3 -m pip --version
# Optional: uv (a uv.lock is committed for reproducible installs)
#   pipx install uv   # or: curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
# Optional, only for "Connect it locally": a local Citrate devnet node on :8545

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/CitrateNetwork/citrate-sdk-python.git
cd citrate-sdk-python

# pip (editable install with dev extras)
python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e '.[dev]'

# --- or with uv (uses the committed uv.lock) ---
# uv sync

pytest                 # run the test suite
citrate contract       # smoke-test the CLI: prints the federation contract table

pyproject.toml is the single source of truth for dependencies (requests, cryptography, eth-account, web3, numpy). The install exposes the citrate console script.

Run locally

This is a library plus a CLI. Install it into your environment, then either import it or use the CLI:

pip install citrate-labs-sdk        # from PyPI (published as citrate-labs-sdk)
citrate --help                      # subcommands: contract, wallet, entitlement, gateway

30-second Quickstart (against the public testnet, chain 40204):

import os
from citrate_sdk import CitrateClient

client = CitrateClient(
    rpc_url="https://rpc.citrate.ai",             # testnet default (chain 40204)
    private_key=os.getenv("CITRATE_PRIVATE_KEY"), # optional; required to sign
)
print("chain id:", client.get_chain_id())          # 40204

Call the inference gateway (OpenAI-compatible; needs a cgk_ key):

from citrate_sdk.gateway import GatewayClient

gw = GatewayClient(api_key=os.environ["CITRATE_GATEWAY_API_KEY"])
print(gw.chat_completions(
    model="gemma-4-E4B-it-Q4_K_M",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Say hi from Citrate"}],
))

Runnable examples live in examples/ (basic_usage.py, encrypted_inference.py, marketplace_demo.py). Verify it's up: get_chain_id() returning 40204 confirms the RPC.

deploy_model never places key shares in deployment metadata; its key-share check on caller-supplied metadata is a safety net against accidental inclusion, not a guarantee against deliberately re-encoded data.

Security: the client warns/fails on a remote plaintext http:// RPC (keys and signed transactions would go out in cleartext). Loopback http:// is always allowed; pass allow_insecure_http=True for a trusted TLS-less internal host.

Connect it locally ← the differentiator

Point the SDK at a local Citrate stack on one machine instead of the public testnet.

1. Local chain — run a Citrate devnet node (chain 40204) from citrate-chain and deploy its contract book. It exposes JSON-RPC on http://localhost:8545.
2. Point the SDK at it (loopback needs no opt-in):

   from citrate_sdk import CitrateClient
   client = CitrateClient(
       rpc_url="http://localhost:8545",
       private_key="0xac0974bec39a17e36ba4a6b4d238ff944bacb478cbed5efcae784d7bf4f2ff80",  # anvil acct #0
       expected_genesis_hash=None,  # a local devnet is not the r1006 genesis
   )
   assert client.get_chain_id() == 40204
   

   The client refuses to sign if the RPC's eth_chainId does not match the expected 40204; pass chain_id= to override for a custom local chain. A local devnet has its own genesis, so also pass expected_genesis_hash=None (or your devnet's block-0 hash) when it uses chain id 40204.
3. Local inference gateway (optional) — run citrate-inference-gateway and point the gateway client at it:

   gw = GatewayClient(api_key="cgk_...", base_url="http://localhost:8080")
   

4. End-to-end check — run the basic example against your local node:

   CITRATE_RPC_URL=http://localhost:8545 python examples/basic_usage.py
   

For the full multi-repo bring-up (chain → identity → bundler → gateway → SDKs), see the LOCAL_STACK guide at https://docs.citrate.ai.

Verify contracts on CitrateScan

citrate_sdk.verify submits Solidity source to CitrateScan, the explorer for chain 40204, through its Etherscan-compatible API (https://explorer.citrate.ai/api). It POSTs verifysourcecode, polls checkverifystatus, and returns when the explorer has recompiled the source and matched it to the code on chain. Input is a forge or hardhat build-info, a hardhat contract artifact, or a solc standard JSON input. Only the sources the contract's metadata lists are sent, as forge and hardhat-verify do.

import os

from citrate_sdk import CitrateClient, deploy_and_verify, load_build_info, verify_contract

# forge: `forge build --build-info` writes out/build-info/<id>.json with the compiler input.
build_info, _ = load_build_info("out/build-info/<id>.json")
result = verify_contract(
    chain_id=40204,  # optional: sent as Etherscan v2 `chainid`; omit it for a local devnet explorer
    address="0xYourContractAddress",
    build_info=build_info,
    contract="src/MyContract.sol:MyContract",  # or "MyContract" when the name is unique
    constructor_args="0x...",  # optional: the explorer reads them from the creation transaction
)
print(result.status)  # "verified" or "already_verified"

# hardhat: pass the contract artifact; load_build_info follows its .dbg.json.
bi, contract = load_build_info("artifacts/contracts/MyContract.sol/MyContract.json")
verify_contract(chain_id=40204, address="0xYourContractAddress", build_info=bi, contract=contract)

# Deploy from the build-info with the client's key (same genesis/chain-id checks as every
# transaction), then verify with the creation transaction hash.
client = CitrateClient(rpc_url="https://rpc.citrate.ai", private_key=os.environ["CITRATE_PRIVATE_KEY"])
deployed = deploy_and_verify(
    client=client, chain_id=40204, build_info=build_info,
    contract="src/MyContract.sol:MyContract", args=[7, "hello"],
)
print(deployed.address, deployed.tx_hash, deployed.verification.status)

Keywords:

• chain_id: optional. When given, it is sent as Etherscan v2 chainid on the submission and on every status call. When omitted, no chainid is sent, so an explorer for a local devnet with another chain id works. This matches citrate contract verify --chain-id.
• explorer_url (default https://explorer.citrate.ai/api), api_key (sent as apikey; not required, and never included in error messages), compiler_version (otherwise read from the contract metadata), creation_tx_hash.
• wait=False: return the guid without polling.
• poll_interval (3 s) and timeout (300 s) for the status polling. A transient error while polling (connection reset, request timeout, HTTP 5xx or 429) does not end the wait: the poll is retried with a backoff that doubles from poll_interval up to transient_backoff_max (30 s), within timeout. A 4xx other than 429, or a Fail verdict, ends it. poll_interval is at least MIN_POLL_INTERVAL (5 ms), so 0 does not retry in a tight loop.
• rate_limit_retries (3) and rate_limit_backoff (5 s) for Max rate limit reached. The explorer takes one submission per 5 s per IP, so while it has not indexed a just-deployed contract, deploy_and_verify resubmits at most every max(poll_interval, rate_limit_backoff) seconds, for up to index_timeout (120 s).

check_verify_status(guid) and wait_for_verification(guid) poll a job you submitted earlier; pass the same chain_id (or none) as the submission. CitrateClient.deploy_contract waits up to receipt_timeout (120 s) for the receipt and raises CitrateError with code DEPLOY_FAILED when the receipt has status 0.

Errors subclass VerificationError (a CitrateError):

• BuildInfoError: bad input, nothing sent. A plain forge build without --build-info gets this error, with the fix in the message.
• VerificationFailedError: Fail - Unable to verify.
• VerificationRejectedError: the explorer's refusal string.
• VerificationRateLimitedError: still rate limited after retries.
• VerificationTimeoutError: no verdict yet. The job may still finish.
• ExplorerResponseError: the explorer could not be reached or gave an unexpected answer. transient is true for a transport failure, a timeout, HTTP 5xx and 429.

The explorer accepts at most 64 files and 2 MiB, inline content only.

forge and hardhat can verify against the same API directly. Two details matter on chain 40204:

• forge: use --verifier custom --verifier-url https://explorer.citrate.ai/api --verifier-api-key citrate. With forge 1.5.1, --verifier etherscan stops before sending anything ("No known Etherscan API URL for chain 40204"). --verifier-api-key must be present, and any value works.
• hardhat-verify: give etherscan.apiKey as a per-network object ({ citrate: "citrate" }) with a customChains entry for chainId 40204 (apiURL: "https://explorer.citrate.ai/api"). With hardhat-verify 2.1.3 a single string apiKey switches it to Etherscan's v2 mode, which ignores customChains and sends the request to api.etherscan.io.

Configuration

CitrateClient(rpc_url, private_key=None, timeout=..., allow_insecure_http=False, chain_id=None, expected_genesis_hash=<vendored>). The expected chain id (40204), genesis hash (r1006) and gateway base URL come from the vendored federation artifact; citrate contract prints the full table. The managers take the same chain_id= / expected_genesis_hash= keywords.

Links

• Docs: https://docs.citrate.ai
• Depends on: citrate-chain · citrate-inference-gateway · citrate-identity
• Parity with: citrate-sdk-js (canonical SDK)
• Contributing (DCO): CONTRIBUTING.md · Security: SECURITY.md · License: LICENSE

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (see LICENSE). This is the open-source infrastructure tier of Citrate's open-core model. The commercial application layer is source-available under BUSL-1.1. Licensor: Citrate Inc.