Lilac Provider Guide

Lilac is a Tier-2 catalog provider: OpenAI-wire-compatible with no behavioural quirks, so its entire integration is one JSON file (src/lib/providers/catalog/lilac.json) rather than hand-written code. That file is the source of truth for everything on this page.

Verification status: this entry is docs- and roster-verified, not yet live-verified. Every model id, context window, output ceiling and price below comes from an unauthenticated GET /v1/models call (no API key used) cross-checked against Lilac's published docs. No request that needs a key — chat completions, streaming, tool calls, structured output — has been probed end to end. Capability flags reflect only what the docs state; run the live matrix (see Tier-2 onboarding) before trusting this provider in production.

Key Facts

Provider id: lilac
Protocol: OpenAI-compatible (/chat/completions) — docs.getlilac.com states Lilac "provides an OpenAI-compatible API. If you're already using the OpenAI SDK, you only need to change the base URL and API key."
Base URL: https://api.getlilac.com/v1
Default model: moonshotai/kimi-k2.6
Models in catalog: 4
Streaming: documented (stream: true, SSE); not live-probed
Tool calling: documented ("Function definitions with automatic argument extraction," supported for all four current models); not live-probed
Structured output: documented (response_format with json_object or json_schema, supported for all four current models); not live-probed. Gemma 4 carries a documented caveat: combining its reasoning parser with enable_thinking: false "can silently disable xgrammar-backed structured output."
Tools + structured output together: not declared — no combined probe was possible without a key
Embeddings: explicitly documented as not supported (along with audio, fine-tuning, the Assistants API, Batch API and file uploads)
Billing: no free tier — prepaid credit only (Stripe checkout, as little as $5), no minimum spend or contract once funded
Key format: none documented
Rate limits: 200 requests/minute per organization; excess requests may get HTTP 429 with a Retry-After header

Quick Start

1. Get an API key

Visit: https://console.getlilac.com and sign up with your email or a Google account
Create an organization, then go to API Keys in the dashboard and create a new key — it is shown only once, so copy it immediately
Go to Billing, click Add Credits and complete the Stripe checkout (as little as $5.00) — a positive credit balance is required before you can make any API request; there is no free tier or free credits
Set LILAC_API_KEY in your .env file

New-model requests and enterprise monthly-invoicing setup both go through [email protected].

2. Configure

export LILAC_API_KEY=your-api-key
export LILAC_MODEL=moonshotai/kimi-k2.6      # optional — overrides the default model
export LILAC_BASE_URL=https://api.getlilac.com/v1   # optional — self-hosted or proxy

3. Use it

import { NeuroLink } from "@juspay/neurolink";

const neurolink = new NeuroLink();

const result = await neurolink.generate({
  input: { text: "Explain context windows in one paragraph." },
  provider: "lilac",
  model: "moonshotai/kimi-k2.6",
});

console.log(result.content);

# CLI
npx @juspay/neurolink generate "Hello" --provider lilac

Per-request credentials work as they do for every provider:

await neurolink.generate({
  input: { text: "Hello" },
  provider: "lilac",
  credentials: { lilac: { apiKey: process.env.LILAC_API_KEY } },
});

Models

Model	Context	Vision	$/M in · out	Notes
`moonshotai/kimi-k2.6` ⭐	262K	yes	$0.70 / $3.50 (cached $0.16)	Default — the model used in every code sample on Lilac's own quickstart and chat-completions docs, including its vision example. Roster-verified only, not capability-probed.
`minimaxai/minimax-m3`	1M	yes	$0.28 / $1.10 (cached $0.05)	Largest context in the roster; native multimodal 428B MoE reasoning model. Fallback.
`zai-org/glm-5.2`	512K	no	$0.90 / $3.00 (cached $0.17)	Only non-vision model on the roster; its `reasoning_effort` also works as a plain top-level field, not only inside `chat_template_kwargs`. Fallback.
`google/gemma-4-31b-it`	256K	yes	$0.11 / $0.35	Cheapest model; does not list `structured_outputs` in its supported parameters (only `response_format`), and docs flag a structured-output caveat under `enable_thinking: false`. Fallback.

Context window and output-ceiling numbers are from GET /v1/models (unauthenticated, 2026-09-28); the API reports the per-model max_completion_tokens equal to that same model's context length, so treat it as an upper bound rather than a separately proven output cap. Pricing is cross-checked against https://docs.getlilac.com/inference/models (same date) and matches exactly.

Fallback order when the default is unavailable: minimaxai/minimax-m3 → zai-org/glm-5.2 → google/gemma-4-31b-it.

Verification status

Tier-2 onboarding requires evidence before a provider is accepted, and pnpm run verify:provider-onboarding gates it in CI. This is what the catalog records for Lilac — and, just as importantly, what it does not record yet:

Probe	Result
Roster	unauthenticated `GET /v1/models`, HTTP 200, 4 models, 2026-09-28 — ids match the docs page exactly (`google/gemma-4-31b-it`, `minimaxai/minimax-m3`, `moonshotai/kimi-k2.6`, `zai-org/glm-5.2`)
Auth rejection	not probed — a request with an invalid key would need to `POST /v1/chat/completions`, which this onboarding pass deliberately never sends
Live capability sweep	not run — no key was available or used. `errorRules` is intentionally empty in the JSON (no documented auth-failure shape to encode); NeuroLink's generic default error classifier (401 → authentication, 429 → rate-limit, 404 → invalid-model) applies until a live probe adds provider-specific rules
Billing	Docs-only: prepaid Stripe credits, no free tier, no minimum spend once funded ("no minimums or contracts"); a positive balance is required before the first request

Do not treat this provider as production-ready until someone with a Lilac key runs the live matrix and records the result in evidence.liveMatrix.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Requests fail immediately	No credit balance — Lilac requires a positive balance before any call succeeds	Add credits via Billing → Add Credits at https://console.getlilac.com
Model not found	The roster changed since 2026-09-28	Pick a current id from the unauthenticated `GET /v1/models` roster
Frequent 429s	Lilac's documented limit is 200 requests/minute per organization	Respect the `Retry-After` header and back off; request a higher limit via [email protected]
Structured output silently malformed	Gemma 4 only — combining its reasoning parser with `enable_thinking: false` can disable structured output per Lilac's docs	Leave `enable_thinking` at its default for Gemma 4, or use a different model for schema-strict calls
`embed()` throws	Lilac does not support embeddings	Use a provider that does (see Embeddings)

Key Facts​

Quick Start​

1. Get an API key​

2. Configure​

3. Use it​

Models​

Verification status​

Troubleshooting​

See also​