How I put a data product behind x402 so AI agents can buy it with USDC

说明与用途

代理无法完成订阅，作者使用带支付条款的 HTTP 402，让他们用 USDC 付款并在无账户的情况下获取数据。

问题

AI agents cannot complete traditional subscription sign‑ups or fill out billing forms, making it hard to sell paid data products to them.

结果

Agents can purchase data products using only a wallet, without accounts or API keys, by leveraging HTTP 402 responses that encode payment terms and a retry loop.

工作流

• 1. Agent requests a paid resource without payment. 2. Server responds 402 with machine‑readable payment terms. 3. Agent builds and signs a USDC transfer per the terms, sends it in an X‑Payment header. 4. Server verifies the on‑chain payment and serves the resource. 5. Agent receives the data (JSON leads).

证据

Agents can't fill out billing forms. So I put the product behind x402: HTTP 402 "Payment Required", resurrected as a machine checkout.

来源

The 402 body isn't an error page. It's an offer.

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Re-verify on every retry.

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The MCP server reads the same catalog the 402 endpoint uses, so the menu and the checkout can never disagree.

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