Messagebird LanguageDetection
Browse all Messagebird APIs★ Only Publicly Available OpenAPI DocumentAI/MLMl InferenceapiKey2 EndpointsREST
For Agents
Detect the language of a phrase and return a language code so an agent can route, translate, or classify multilingual messages.
Use for: Detect the language of this customer message, Identify which language a chat reply was written in, Check whether Portuguese is supported by the language detector, List all languages the detector can recognise
Not supported: Does not handle translation, intent classification, or entity extraction — use for language identification of short text only.
Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for LanguageDetection, keeping it validated and agent-ready. The MessageBird Language Detection API identifies the natural language of a short text snippet, returning a language code that downstream services can use to route, translate, or classify the message correctly. It exposes the predict endpoint and a list of supported languages, making it a small focused building block for multilingual messaging pipelines. Predictions are designed for the kinds of short utterances seen in SMS, WhatsApp, and chat traffic.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the LanguageDetection to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the LanguageDetection, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
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Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
Capabilities
What an agent can do with LanguageDetection API.
Detect the language of an inbound SMS phrase before routing it to a locale-specific workflow
Branch a chatbot reply path on the detected language code returned by the predictor
Confirm whether a target language is supported before submitting prediction traffic
Filter inbound message streams by detected language for analytics segmentation
Pre-screen messages so unsupported locales are escalated to a human reviewer
Use Cases
Patterns agents use LanguageDetection API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Multilingual Inbound Routing
When inbound SMS or chat messages can arrive in any language, Language Detection identifies the locale so the workflow can route each message to a language-specific support team or classifier. The API takes a phrase and returns a language code in a single call, with no training step required. This removes brittle keyword heuristics and keeps multilingual queues clean.
POST a customer message to /api/v1/predict-language and route it to the Spanish queue when the predicted language code is 'es'
Pre-Translation Locale Detection
Before sending a message to a translation service, agents call Language Detection to identify the source language so the translator does not have to auto-detect or guess. This produces more accurate translations and lets the agent skip the translate step entirely when the detected language already matches the target locale. The supported-languages endpoint lets the workflow short-circuit unsupported pairs.
Call POST /api/v1/predict-language to identify the source language, then translate the message only if the detected code differs from the target locale
Compliance and Analytics Segmentation
Tag every inbound message with a detected language code so downstream analytics, audit logs, and compliance dashboards can segment volume by locale. This is especially useful for support teams that need to report SLA performance per language or that operate in regions with multilingual customer bases. Detection runs in line with ingestion and adds the language code as a structured field on each record.
Enrich each inbound message record with the language code returned by POST /api/v1/predict-language for downstream reporting
AI Agent Integration via Jentic
An AI agent uses Jentic to discover Language Detection by intent search ('detect the language of a message'). Jentic returns the predict-language operation with its input schema, so the agent submits a phrase and receives a structured language code in a single load-and-execute step. The MessageBird AccessKey is held in the Jentic vault and never exposed to the agent.
Use Jentic to search 'detect the language of a phrase', load the predict-language schema, and execute it to enrich an inbound chat record
Key Endpoints
2 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for languagedetection, keeping it validated and agent-ready.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
POST
/api/v1/predict-language
Predict the language of a submitted phrase
GET
/api/v1/supported-languages
List supported detection languages
POST
/api/v1/predict-language
Predict the language of a submitted phrase
GET
/api/v1/supported-languages
List supported detection languages
Why Jentic?
Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.
Credential isolation
MessageBird AccessKey API keys are stored encrypted in the Jentic vault (MAXsystem). Agents receive scoped tokens — the raw `AccessKey` value never enters prompts or logs.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search by intent (e.g. 'detect the language of a phrase') and Jentic returns the predict-language operation with its input schema, so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing docs.
Time to first call
Direct integration: half a day to a day for auth and error handling. Through Jentic: under 15 minutes — search, load schema, execute.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
FAQs
Specific to using LanguageDetection API through Jentic.
Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for LanguageDetection?
MessageBird does not publish an OpenAPI specification for the Language Detection API. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call it via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started at https://app.jentic.com/sign-up.
What authentication does the MessageBird Language Detection API use?
Authentication is an API key sent in the `Authorization` header, prefixed with the literal word `AccessKey`. Through Jentic, the access key is held in the MAXsystem vault and injected at request time, so the raw key is never exposed to the agent.
Which languages can the detector recognise?
Call GET /api/v1/supported-languages to fetch the full set at runtime. The list evolves as MessageBird extends coverage, so do not hardcode it in agent prompts or workflow definitions.
How do I detect the language of a message through Jentic?
Search Jentic for `detect the language of a phrase`, load the POST /api/v1/predict-language operation, and execute it with your text. Jentic returns the predicted language code as a structured response your agent can branch on.
Is the Language Detection API designed for long documents?
The endpoint is optimised for the short utterances seen in SMS, WhatsApp, and chat traffic. For long-form document language identification, evaluate accuracy on representative samples or pair it with a general-purpose NLP model.
Are there published rate limits?
The OpenAPI spec does not declare quantitative rate limits. Check your MessageBird account dashboard or contact MessageBird support for the limits attached to your plan before bulk-detecting traffic.
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