# Agent Paycheck - x402 Pre-Payment Risk & Usefulness Check

> Agent Paycheck - x402 Pre-Payment Risk & Usefulness Check is a paid API for AI agents from agent-paycheck.onrender.com, paid per call via x402, $0.002/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-15).

Evaluates whether an AI agent should pay for an x402-gated endpoint by assessing risk, usefulness, price fairness, and source reputation before committing funds.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://agent-paycheck.onrender.com/v1/check
- Price: $0.002/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-15
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/agent-paycheck-x402-pre-payment-risk-usefulness-check-c9221ecd
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_TA8gF1Oth-rojY5Fqndmd

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability agent-paycheck-x402-pre-payment-risk-usefulness-check-c9221ecd -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Before I pay for this x402 endpoint, run a paycheck risk assessment on it — the task is 'get current weather data', the price is $0.05, the endpoint URL is https://example.com/weather, my max budget is $1.00, and here's its OpenAPI spec URL: https://example.com/openapi.json.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when an AI agent is operating autonomously within a budget and needs to decide whether to pay for an x402-gated resource. It is especially valuable when the agent has no prior knowledge of the endpoint's reputation, when the price is non-trivial relative to the task value, or when avoiding wasteful or malicious payments is a priority. Prefer this over blind payment when source reputation is unknown or settlement history is sparse.

## Known failure modes

- Missing required fields like task or price_usd returns a validation error
- Unreachable or malformed endpoint_url may result in incomplete reputation scoring
- Unknown or unverifiable OpenAPI spec reduces confidence in output assessment
- Price or budget provided as invalid types may cause parsing errors
- Render cold-start latency may cause occasional slow responses on first call

## How this service works

Pre-payment risk and usefulness check for AI agents deciding whether to pay an x402 endpoint.

## Output

Returns a structured risk and usefulness evaluation indicating whether the agent should proceed with payment, including signals on price fairness, source reputation, task relevance, and settlement history.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "task": {
   "type": "string"
  },
  "price_usd": {
   "type": [
    "number",
    "string"
   ]
  },
  "openapi_url": {
   "type": "string"
  },
  "endpoint_url": {
   "type": "string"
  },
  "input_schema": {
   "type": "object"
  },
  "output_schema": {
   "type": "object"
  },
  "max_budget_usd": {
   "type": [
    "number",
    "string"
   ]
  },
  "recent_activity": {
   "type": "object"
  },
  "source_reputation": {
   "type": "object"
  },
  "successful_settlements": {
   "type": [
    "number",
    "object"
   ]
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/agent-paycheck-x402-pre-payment-risk-usefulness-check-c9221ecd/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from agent-paycheck.onrender.com](https://www.zero.xyz/host/agent-paycheck.onrender.com/llms.txt)