Pilot APIs

Pilot APIs are experimental. They are made available to a restricted set of retailers for early feedback and are subject to change or removal at any time without prior notice. Do not build production-critical workflows on top of a pilot until it has been promoted to a stable API version.

Pilots are early-access APIs that let a selected group of retailers experiment with new functionality before it reaches general availability.

Access

Access to pilot APIs is restricted. Each pilot has its own retailer allow-list managed internally. Only retailers that have been explicitly added to the allow-list for a given pilot can use its endpoints.

If your retailer is not on the allow-list, requests to pilot endpoints return 403 Forbidden with problem type /problems/unauthorized.

If you are interested in joining a pilot, contact your bol account manager or the bol team responsible for the feature.

What to expect from a pilot

Aspect What this means for you

Aspect	What this means for you
Restricted access	Only retailers explicitly invited to the pilot can use the endpoints.
Experimental contract	Request and response shapes, path parameters, media types, and error codes can change between versions without a deprecation period. We will communicate breaking changes, but there is no formal compatibility guarantee.
Can be disabled	A pilot can be switched off at any time — for a specific retailer, for all pilot participants, or entirely — without advance notice if operational or compliance reasons require it.
Not for production-critical flows	Pilot endpoints may have reduced SLA guarantees compared to stable API versions. Do not depend on them for time-sensitive or revenue-critical operations.
Subject to rate limits	Pilot endpoints are subject to the same rate-limiting infrastructure as all other API endpoints. Limits may be tighter than those of the equivalent stable endpoint.
Separate media type	Each pilot uses a dedicated media type. You must set this in both the `Content-Type` and `Accept` headers for every request.

Restricted access

Only retailers explicitly invited to the pilot can use the endpoints.

Experimental contract

Request and response shapes, path parameters, media types, and error codes can change between versions without a deprecation period. We will communicate breaking changes, but there is no formal compatibility guarantee.

Can be disabled

A pilot can be switched off at any time — for a specific retailer, for all pilot participants, or entirely — without advance notice if operational or compliance reasons require it.

Not for production-critical flows

Pilot endpoints may have reduced SLA guarantees compared to stable API versions. Do not depend on them for time-sensitive or revenue-critical operations.

Subject to rate limits

Pilot endpoints are subject to the same rate-limiting infrastructure as all other API endpoints. Limits may be tighter than those of the equivalent stable endpoint.

Separate media type

Each pilot uses a dedicated media type. You must set this in both the Content-Type and Accept headers for every request.

Available pilots

The following pilots are currently available under the Offer API:

Bulk image import — submit a batch of image URLs for an offer and track per-asset processing status.