NLWeb /ask Endpoint

Before writing code

Fetch live spec:

1. Fetch https://github.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/blob/main/docs/nlweb-rest-api.md for the canonical /ask contract — request params, response shape, and streaming format.
2. Fetch https://github.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/blob/main/docs/life-of-a-chat-query.md to trace a request end-to-end.
3. Fetch https://github.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb/blob/main/docs/nlweb-headers.md for the in-stream "headers" mechanism (license, data-retention, rate-limit messages are NOT HTTP headers).
4. Web-search the latest release notes for the v0.55+ structured POST body shape (query.text, prefer.mode, prefer.streaming, meta.version) — this is newer than the GET-only legacy contract.
5. Check webserver/routes/api.py in the live repo to confirm exact param names.

Conceptual Architecture

Routes