TL;DR: for building a Node chatbot with the OpenAI API, use the /v1/chat/completions endpoint for the conversational part of an in-app candidate scorer. Put structured-output validation, an application-owned job record, and bounded 429 retries around it. The endpoint is a good fit when the rubric travels with the conversation. It is not a substitute for an audit store or a specialist provider evaluation.

Choice Best fit for candidate scoring Recovery cost you still own

OpenAI-compatible Chat Completions A Node.js chatbot that needs context plus a typed rubric result Idempotency, validation, and provider error handling

OpenAI Responses A new OpenAI-first system using its broader response primitives Migration from the chat message contract and provider-specific tests

Anthropic Messages A team whose evaluation suite already favors Anthropic models A separate message schema, credentials, and routing layer

Google Gemini generateContent An application already standardized on Google's platform Another request…