OpenAI API and Agent Application Development
Lesson 1: OpenAI Platform Fundamentals and API Security
Lesson Objectives
By the end of this lesson, students should be able to:
- Distinguish ChatGPT product use from OpenAI API integration
- Keep API credentials server-side and out of client code
- Estimate usage, limits, retries, and cost controls
- Design logging that supports debugging without exposing sensitive data
Lesson Content
The ChatGPT product and OpenAI API are related but different services. An API application sends structured requests from your software and receives model outputs. It needs authentication, server-side code, error handling, monitoring, and a user experience you control.
API keys are secrets. Store them in server-side environment or secret-management systems. Never embed them in browser JavaScript, mobile apps, public repositories, screenshots, or downloadable packages. Use project-level separation, least privilege where available, rotation, budgets, and alerts.
Production systems must handle rate limits, timeouts, transient failures, malformed output, and cost spikes. Apply bounded retries with backoff, request identifiers, input limits, output limits, and user-facing failure messages. Log metadata needed to debug while redacting prompts, personal data, credentials, and regulated information according to policy.
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