# Inference API error: "model ID was not provided"

**URL:** https://deeptalk.lambda.ai/t/inference-api-error-model-id-was-not-provided/4613
**Category:** Uncategorized
**Created:** [April 18, 2025, 1:19am UTC](https://deeptalk.lambda.ai/t/inference-api-error-model-id-was-not-provided/4613 "2025-04-18T01:19:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![benjismith](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/deeptalk.lambda.ai/benjismith/32/748_2.png) [@benjismith](https://deeptalk.lambda.ai/u/benjismith)
#### Post date: [April 18, 2025, 1:19am UTC](https://deeptalk.lambda.ai/t/inference-api-error-model-id-was-not-provided/4613/1 "2025-04-18T01:19:22Z")

</div>

I tried calling the inference API with the following curl…

```auto
curl -sS https://api.lambda.ai/v1/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <REDACTED>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
        "model": "llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct",
        "prompt": "Computers are",
        "temperature": 0
      }'

```

…but this resulted in the following response:

```auto
{"message":"model ID was not provided","type":"invalid_request_error"}

```

The model ID is definitely right there in the request… so what should I do?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![stmcginnis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ac8455/32.png) [@stmcginnis](https://deeptalk.lambda.ai/u/stmcginnis)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2025, 5:50pm UTC](https://deeptalk.lambda.ai/t/inference-api-error-model-id-was-not-provided/4613/2 "2025-04-23T17:50:42Z")

</div>

> [@benjismith](#):
>
> ```auto
> \
> -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
> -d '{
> "model": "llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct",
> "prompt": "Computers are",
> "temperature": 0
> }'
> 
> ```

I’m not able to reproduce this failure. Are you still getting this error?

The only thing I can think of would be if your API key is invalid and this is a misleading error as a result of that. But I believe in that case you should be getting back an “unauthorized” error message.