Genomic Intelligence — DNA Sequence Models
Genomic Intelligence (GI) serves transformer DNA language models over six sequence-analysis tasks on managed GPUs. Give it a gene symbol, a genomic region, or a DNA/FASTA sequence; it returns structured predictions — promoter regions, splice sites, enhancer activity, chromatin state, expression (log TPM), and de-novo gene annotation. Nothing runs locally: no model weights, no GPU, no heavy Python stack. It is a thin client over a hosted, versioned inference API.
Official docs: docs.genomicintelligence.ai ·
REST contract at api.genomicintelligence.ai/v1/openapi.json ·
hosted MCP server at https://mcp.genomicintelligence.ai/mcp
When to use this skill
Use GI when the user has DNA and wants a model prediction:
- Find promoters in a genomic region (
promoter) - Predict splice donor/acceptor sites (
splice) - Score enhancer activity — developmental & housekeeping (
enhancer) - Annotate chromatin state across hundreds of tracks (
chromatin) - Predict expression as log(TPM+1) from a sequence + cell-type context (
expression) - Annotate genes/transcripts de novo, no reference needed (
annotation) - Find the genes in a region and predict each one's expression (composite)
Not for local alignment, variant calling, or file I/O — use a local tool (BioPython, bcftools) for those. GI is for model inference from sequence.
Research and development use. Not for clinical or diagnostic decisions.
Two ways to call GI
Hosted MCP server (keyless; preferred on MCP hosts)
GI hosts an MCP server at https://mcp.genomicintelligence.ai/mcp (Streamable
HTTP). When your agent host supports MCP, prefer it: it works keyless against
a rate- and concurrency-limited public demo tier, and an optional gi_ bearer
key raises those limits. It exposes acquisition tools that return a sequence handle
(sequence_ref) and predict_* tools that take that handle, so large sequences
stay out of the context. See MCP workflow below and
references/mcp.md.
REST API (universal)
Plain HTTP with requests against https://api.genomicintelligence.ai/v1. The
REST path requires a GI_API_KEY (a gi_ bearer). Use it on any host, in
scripts, or when you need the raw envelope. See Core REST workflow.
Access and authentication
- The hosted MCP demo is keyless — try it with nothing set.
- The REST
/v1API needs a key, sent asAuthorization: Bearer <key>. Request one at contact@genomicintelligence.ai. - Never hardcode the key. Read it from the
GI_API_KEYenvironment variable (or a.envviapython-dotenv). Never commit keys.
export GI_API_KEY="gi_yourkeyhere" # optional for MCP; required for REST
export GI_BASE_URL="https://api.genomicintelligence.ai" # override for staging
Keys are scoped to a partner tier with concurrency and per-minute caps. A 429
means you hit a cap — back off and retry, or ask GI to raise your tier.
The six tasks
Each task is its own published operation with its own request schema, its own
minimum length, and its own closed options object — POST /v1/tasks/promoter/predict, /v1/tasks/splice/predict,
/v1/tasks/enhancer/predict, /v1/tasks/chromatin/predict,
/v1/tasks/annotation/predict, /v1/tasks/expression/predict. Each path is a
literal string, so nothing needs to be constructed, and there is no shared
PredictRequest schema. Body is {sequence, sequence_name?, model?, options?}, returning a {data, meta} envelope. What differs per task:
| Task | Recommended mode | Accepted length | context_window_bp |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
promoter |
sync | 300–500,000 bp | 2,000 bp | sliding-window promoter regions |
splice |
sync | 100–500,000 bp | 15,000 bp | donor/acceptor sites (long-context BigBird); strand-specific — feed transcript orientation |
enhancer |
sync | 50–500,000 bp | 249 bp | dev + housekeeping scores (DeepSTARR, Drosophila) |
chromatin |
sync | 200–500,000 bp | 1,000 bp | hundreds of tracks (DeepSEA) |
expression |
sync | 9,198–500,000 bp | n/a (trained_window_bp 9,198) |
log(TPM+1); needs tss_index unless exactly 9,198 bp, plus a cell-type description |
annotation |
async | 1,000–500,000 bp | n/a | de-novo transcripts; submit + poll; sync above 200,000 bp is 413 sync_too_large |
Recommended mode is guidance, not a constraint — every task accepts both. Omit Prefer for a synchronous 200; send Prefer: respond-async for a 202 plus GET /v1/tasks/jobs/{job_id}. The one enforced limit is per operation: where /v1/openapi.json publishes x-sync-limit-bp on a POST, a synchronous request above that length is 413 sync_too_large — 200,000 bp on annotation and 50,000 bp on the composite workflow as of info.version 2026.09.10.1. Read the field rather than memorising the numbers; the other predict tasks carry no limit today.
The minimum is admission control, not regime. A request above the floor but
shorter than the selected model's bio_spec.context_window_bp is accepted and
scored — against a window padded out to the context window. Enhancer is the
sharp case: the floor is 50 bp but the context window is 249 bp, so 50–248 bp is
scored mostly on padding. Compare your length against
context_window_bp from GET /v1/tasks/{task}/models to know whether the model
saw real sequence. Longer-than-context input is fine — the scanner steps a
prediction window at a time and pads only the final partial window.
Under the floor and over the 500,000 bp cap are both 422 validation_failed
at loc ["body","sequence"]; over-length is not a 413. All lengths are
measured after whitespace is stripped, so a line-wrapped FASTA body can be pasted
verbatim (a > header line still fails the alphabet check).
options is typed and closed (additionalProperties: false) per task — an
unknown key is a hard 422 validation_failed with type: "extra_forbidden",
never ignored:
| Task | options keys |
|---|---|
| promoter | threshold (0–1, default 0.5) |
| splice | threshold (0–1, default 0.5), site_types (subset of ["donor","acceptor"], default both) |
| enhancer | (none) |
| chromatin | threshold (0–1, default 0.5) |
| annotation | batch_size (1–128, default 8), shift_coordinates, reverse_complement (default true) |
| expression | description — required, and the only key |
Prefer: respond-async is a declared header on all six predict operations
and on the composite, not just annotation — see Async.
Omit model and the API uses the task's default — that is the recommended
call. Default model IDs are intentionally not documented here: defaults
change and retired IDs fail hard, so never hardcode one. To pin a model, or to
pick a non-human one (Drosophila, yeast, and Arabidopsis models exist for several
tasks), discover IDs at call time with GET /v1/tasks/{task}/models (REST) or
list_models (MCP) — and never invent one. Full per-task output shapes are
in references/tasks.md.
expression is the strictest of the six: alone among them its schema requires
options as well as sequence. Three hard rules it enforces — every violation
is a 422, nothing is padded or clamped, and there is no opt-out flag, header,
or query parameter:
- It always scores exactly one 9,198 bp TSS-centred window —
sequence[tss_index-4599 : tss_index+4599]. The endpoint itself accepts 9,198–500,000 bp; anything below 9,198 bp is rejected outright. tss_indexis required unless the sequence is exactly 9,198 bp. It is the 0-based TSS offset into the whitespace-stripped sequence, bounded by4599 ≤ tss_index ≤ len(sequence) − 4599. At exactly 9,198 bp it defaults to 4,599, the only legal value there. So you may submit a whole locus (up to 500 kb) and let the server cut the window — but the server does not discover the TSS for you (that is the composite workflow's job), and does not reverse-complement: submit gene-sense sequence.options.description— a cell-type / assay string (e.g."K562 cells") — is required, and is the only keyexpressionaccepts insideoptions. Unknown top-level body fields are rejected too.
Note: the legal
tss_indexrange is wide, so an offset that is merely wrong (counted over raw FASTA characters including newlines, or relative to a locus start rather than the submitted slice) does not error — it returns a confident200for the wrong window. Assert onmeta.task_specific_counts.scored_window/.tss_indexin the response. The length you submitted ismeta.sequence_length(also echoed asdata.input.submitted_sequence_length); the scored width is always 9,198, i.e.scored_window[1] - scored_window[0]. (data.input.sequence_lengthwas removed at contract revision 13.)Both
tss_indexviolations — "required unless exactly 9,198 bp" and the range check — come from a whole-model validator, so they surface at the body level rather than undertss_index. Match onerror.code == "validation_failed"and use the message for display only. Anyloctuple quoted in this skill is illustrative of that shape, not part of the contract: it is not published in the schema and must not be branched on.
Sequence acquisition
You rarely start from a raw 9,198 bp string. Acquire sequence first:
- From a gene symbol → MCP
fetch_ensembl_sequence(gene=...); from coordinates →fetch_region(region=...). Both fetch public Ensembl reference sequence (no key). REST users can query Ensembl REST directly. (find_genesis the annotation task, not an acquisition tool.) - For
expression→ use the TSS-centred fetch so the window is exactly 9,198 bp. MCP:fetch_gene_for_expression(handles the centring). Otherwise fetch a wider locus and pass the TSS astss_indexso the server cuts the window — but compute that offset on the stripped nucleotide string, not on file characters. - From a local FASTA → MCP
store_inline_sequence, or read the file yourself for REST. (load_local_fastaexists only in local deployments, not on the hosted server.) - A demo sequence → MCP
load_demo_sequence(name=...)returns a ready handle for a keyless smoke test;nameis required.
See references/sequence-acquisition.md for the exact Ensembl calls and the
expression-window math.
Core REST workflow
Called synchronously — the default for every task — a prediction is one call:
import os, requests
BASE = os.environ.get("GI_BASE_URL", "https://api.genomicintelligence.ai")
HEADERS = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['GI_API_KEY']}"}
def predict(task, sequence, sequence_name, model=None, options=None, tss_index=None):
body = {"sequence": sequence, "sequence_name": sequence_name}
if model: body["model"] = model
if options: body["options"] = options
if tss_index is not None: body["tss_index"] = tss_index # expression only
# Each task is its own published operation, but the URL string is unchanged.
r = requests.post(f"{BASE}/v1/tasks/{task}/predict", headers=HEADERS, json=body)
# 422 validation_failed — sequence under the task floor OR over 500,000 bp,
# bad tss_index, missing options.description,
# or ANY unknown body/options key (options is closed)
# 401 no/bad key · 404 unknown task · 413 body over 16 MiB · 429 rate limit
r.raise_for_status()
return r.json() # {"data": {...}, "meta": {...}}
# Promoter:
out = predict("promoter", seq, "TP53_region")
print(out["data"]["summary"])
# Expression — a pre-cut 9,198 bp TSS-centred window (tss_index defaults to 4,599):
out = predict("expression", tss_window_9198bp, "HBB",
options={"description": "K562 cells"})
print(out["data"]["prediction"]["expression_log_tpm"])
# Expression — a whole locus; the server slices ±4,599 bp around the TSS you name.
# tss_index is 0-based into the whitespace-stripped sequence.
out = predict("expression", locus_seq, "HBB",
options={"description": "K562 cells"}, tss_index=tss_offset_in_locus)
print(out["meta"]["task_specific_counts"]["scored_window"]) # confirm the window scored
Async (any task; recommended for annotation)
Prefer: respond-async is a declared header parameter on all six predict
operations and on the composite. A 202 carries the same {data, meta} envelope
as a sync 200, with data = {job_id, status: "accepted", links}; the job id is
also in the Content-Location and X-Job-Id response headers. Async is
JSON-only — combining it with a text format is rejected. annotation is the
task that needs it:
import time
r = requests.post(f"{BASE}/v1/tasks/annotation/predict",
headers={**HEADERS, "Prefer": "respond-async"},
json={"sequence": seq, "sequence_name": "TP53"})
r.raise_for_status() # 202 Accepted
job_id = r.json()["data"]["job_id"]
while True:
j = requests.get(f"{BASE}/v1/tasks/jobs/{job_id}", headers=HEADERS)
if j.status_code == 200: # terminal: body is the final {data, meta}
break
j.raise_for_status() # 202 = still running (2xx, won't raise)
time.sleep(5) # ~20 s typical for ~20 kb
transcripts = j.json()["data"]["transcripts"]
MCP workflow (handle-based)
On an MCP host, acquire a handle, then predict against it — sequences stay out of the context:
# 1. Acquire a sequence handle (each returns a sequence_ref):
load_demo_sequence(name="promoter_tp53") # keyless smoke test; name is required
fetch_ensembl_sequence(gene="TP53") # gene symbol or Ensembl ID -> handle
fetch_region(region="chr11:5,225,000-5,235,000") # coordinates -> handle
fetch_gene_for_expression(gene="HBB") # TSS-centred 9,198 bp handle for expression
# 2. Predict against the handle:
predict_promoter(sequence_ref=<ref>)
predict_expression(sequence_ref=<ref>, description="K562 cells")
predict_splice(sequence_ref=<ref>) # + predict_enhancer / predict_chromatin
# 3. Annotation on MCP is `find_genes` (there is no predict_annotation).
# It takes a handle, not a region, and runs async internally:
find_genes(sequence_ref=<ref>) # wait=True (default) returns the result
find_genes(sequence_ref=<ref>, wait=False) # -> job_id; poll get_job(job_id)
# Discover models with list_models(task); reference context lives in the
# gi://models, gi://docs/tasks, and gi://account MCP resources.
Composite: find genes, then predict expression
To answer "what genes are in this region and how are they expressed?", use the composite:
- MCP:
find_genes_and_predict_expression(sequence_ref=..., description=...)— takes a handle, not a region (acquire one withfetch_regionfirst);descriptionis required. Finds genes in the sequence and returns an expression prediction for each. - REST: one call —
POST /v1/workflows/find-genes-and-predict-expression, body{sequence, options}withsequence1,000–500,000 bp andoptions.description(cell type / assay) required; a missing or empty description is a422 validation_failed. It annotates, centres a 9,198 bp window on each discovered gene's TSS (padding withNup to half the window rather than dropping an edge gene), and returns a prediction per gene.meta.task_specific_counts={genes_found, genes_predicted, genes_skipped}withgenes_predicted + genes_skipped == genes_found; per-gene causes indata.expression_predictions[].skip_reason. Above 50,000 bp (itsx-sync-limit-bp) it forces async: a synchronous request over that size is413 sync_too_largewitherror.details = {sequence_length, threshold}— retry the same body withPrefer: respond-async.
Errors
| Code | error.code |
Meaning | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| 400 | bad_request |
Malformed request | Check the body shape |
| 401 / 403 | unauthorized / forbidden |
Missing/invalid key (REST) | Set GI_API_KEY; or use the keyless MCP demo |
| 404 | not_found |
Unknown task (/v1/tasks/bogus/predict) or unknown job |
Check the task name — an unrecognised task is a 404, not a 422 |
| 413 | payload_too_large |
Raw request body over 16 MiB | Split the input — this is the body cap, not the sequence cap |
| 413 | sync_too_large |
Synchronous request above the operation's x-sync-limit-bp (200,000 bp on annotation, 50,000 bp on the composite) |
Retry with Prefer: respond-async |
| 415 | unsupported_format |
Unsupported format query value |
Use a format the task supports; there is no silent fallback to JSON |
| 422 | validation_failed |
The most common failure: sequence under the task floor or over 500,000 bp, expression below 9,198 bp, a missing/out-of-range tss_index, a missing options.description, or any unknown body or options key |
Read the message; fix the body |
| 429 | rate_limited / too_many_requests |
Rate / concurrency cap | Back off (honour Retry-After); ask GI to raise your tier |
| 5xx | internal_error / service_unavailable / model_loading / timeout |
Server error | Retry; if persistent, contact support |
error.code is a closed 21-value enum (bad_request, unauthorized,
forbidden, not_found, conflict, job_expired, payload_too_large,
sync_too_large, unsupported_format, validation_failed,
too_many_requests, rate_limited, internal_error, timeout,
insufficient_memory, model_not_found, task_not_supported_by_model,
model_loading, service_unavailable, http_error, unknown); treat an
unlisted value as a generic failure, not a parse error.
Branch on code, never on details or loc. details is keyed on the
sibling code; for validation_failed it is the {errors: [{loc, msg, type}, …]}
object the schema declares. Treat it as display-only — code is the stable
discriminator.
For correlation, error.request_id and the X-Request-Id header are both
set on every response, and success envelopes carry meta.request_id. Reading
the header first remains a safe default.
Every response carries RateLimit-Limit, RateLimit-Remaining,
RateLimit-Reset, RateLimit-Policy; a 429 adds Retry-After.
Verified against OpenAPI
info.version2026.08.20.7. The contract moves, andinfo.versionin/v1/openapi.jsonreports what a given deployment serves: if it is ahead of the version above, re-check the numbers in this file against that document, which is the arbiter if the two disagree.
Reference files
references/tasks.md— per-task output shapes, model registries, the async annotation contract.references/api-and-auth.md— REST endpoints, the{data, meta}envelope, auth, base-URL override, tiers.references/mcp.md— the hosted MCP tool list, the handle-based flow, and thegi://resources.references/sequence-acquisition.md— Ensembl fetch calls and the expression-window (9,198 bp, TSS-centred) math, includingtss_index.