Since I didn’t get any hints I figured I’d answer a few of my own questions for anyone who looks
just for reference YES, self hosted official install included the REST API
Got hints from api example thread how to make cURL calls from the terminal. Once the cURL commands worked I used this website to convert the command line version to PHP
My other server runs PHP as backend and I make ajax calls from web page to function on the server. The Discourse spits out json and javascript it built for decoding that. Style as needed… soup
note this may only work because
and I use API key and user per how to found here
hope it helps someone 