[Bug] TypeScript SDK has no ask() binding — /api/ask is advertised by /health and implemented in the Python SDK, but unreachable from TS #1067

Surface

TypeScript SDK (@mysten-incubation/memwal)

Network

Mainnet (relayer.memory.walrus.xyz)

Package version

@mysten-incubation/memwal 0.1.7 and 0.1.8 (latest on npm) — neither has it. Compared against memwal 0.1.11 (Python), which does. Relayer relayerVersion 0.1.0, apiVersion 1.0.0, build f58104334b9d. Observed 2026-10-01.

What happened?

The relayer serves POST /api/ask: a server-side retrieval-and-answer endpoint that recalls from a namespace and returns a grounded natural-language answer plus the memories it used. It is not an experiment. The relayer advertises it in its own public health payload, with a prompt version:

"prompt_versions": { "extract": "extract.v6", "ask": "ask.v2" }

The Python SDK exposes it as ask() on both the async and sync clients, and it works against mainnet today.

The TypeScript SDK has no binding for it. Calling it fails at the language level:

TypeError: mw.ask is not a function

This isn't a naming difference. grep -rn "api/ask" dist/ across the published TypeScript package returns nothing: the endpoint is not referenced anywhere in the shipped code, in either 0.1.7 or 0.1.8. There is no documented workaround, and signedRequest is private, so a TS caller cannot reach the endpoint through the public API at all without re-implementing request signing (timestamp, nonce, account-bound signature, SEAL session header) by hand.

Why it matters

The TypeScript SDK is the one the quickstart, the dashboard and the Playground examples are written against, so this is missing from the surface most people meet first. The gap also runs opposite to the usual direction, where Python trails TypeScript, which makes it easy to miss: a developer reading the Python docs sees ask(), switches to TS, and finds nothing.

Concretely, every TypeScript caller who wants grounded Q&A over stored memories has to rebuild server-side behaviour on the client: call recall(), assemble a prompt, send it to their own model provider, and pay for those tokens. That's the exact work /api/ask exists to remove, and it also means the conversation leaves the relayer's TEE and goes to a third-party model, which is a different privacy posture than ask() offers.

Steps to reproduce

TypeScript — the method does not exist:

import { MemWal } from "@mysten-incubation/memwal";
const mw = MemWal.create({ key: process.env.MEMWAL_PRIVATE_KEY, accountId: process.env.MEMWAL_ACCOUNT_ID });

try {
  await mw.ask("what do you know about my setup?", 5, "my-namespace");
} catch (e) {
  console.log(e.message);   // "mw.ask is not a function"
}

Python — the same call against the same relayer and namespace works:

import asyncio
from memwal import MemWal

async def main():
    mw = MemWal.create(key=..., account_id=..., server_url="https://relayer.memory.walrus.xyz")
    r = await mw.ask("Answer only from stored memories: what does memwal.remember() return?",
                     limit=5, namespace="<a namespace with memories>")
    print(r.memories_used, "|", r.answer)
    await mw.close()

asyncio.run(main())

Confirm the server advertises it:

curl -s https://relayer.memory.walrus.xyz/health | jq .prompt_versions
# { "extract": "extract.v6", "ask": "ask.v2" }

Expected

ask() on the TypeScript client, matching the Python signature and returning the same shape (answer, memories_used, memories). Failing that, either document the omission in the TypeScript README next to recall(), or stop advertising ask in /health on deployments the flagship SDK can't reach.

Actual

TypeScript 0.1.7 and 0.1.8:

TypeError: mw.ask is not a function

Python 0.1.11, same relayer, same namespace, same question:

ask() OK
  memories_used: 5
  memories returned: 5
  answer: The `memwal.remember()` method stores a memory string and returns a job object with a `job_id` property.

The answer is correctly grounded in a stored memory, so the endpoint is working as intended. It is only unreachable from TypeScript.

Logs or error text

TypeError: mw.ask is not a function

Checks

• I searched existing issues and this is not a duplicate. The tracker has no issue about ask(); the nearest results are [SDK/Bug] embed() calls POST /api/embed, which the relayer server does not register — 100% 404 #618 (closed, embed() hitting an unregistered route — a different method, and embed() works correctly today, returning a 1536-dimension vector) and Python recall() cannot pass scoring_weights, so recency and importance ranking are unreachable from the high-level API #1062 (Python recall() parity, opposite direction).
• This report contains no private keys, mnemonics, or other secrets.