# Apify Actor Preflight

> Apify Actor Preflight is a paid API for AI agents from audit-tools.ai, paid per call via x402, $0.02/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-14).

Scores an Apify actor on pricing, maintenance, reliability, docs, and output schema from public metadata — returning a verdict and evidence JSON before you run it.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://audit-tools.ai/api/preflight?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.02/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-14
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/apify-actor-preflight-8ce6eec6
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_8hf-qd59W6RKoAitYfECL

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 apify-actor-preflight-8ce6eec6 -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Before I commit any budget, can you preflight-check apify/instagram-scraper for me — score it on pricing, maintenance, reliability, and docs, and give me a verdict on whether it's worth running?

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you want a fast, free-to-cheap ($0.02) quality signal on an Apify actor before committing to a $1 full audit or actual execution costs. It's ideal for agent pipelines that need to shortlist or reject actors programmatically based on public metadata signals like maintenance recency, pricing structure, and output schema completeness. Prefer the sibling full-audit endpoint when you need empirical evidence of what the actor actually delivers at runtime.

## Known failure modes

- Unknown or misspelled actor ID returns an error or empty result
- Private/unlisted actors may have insufficient public metadata for scoring
- Actors with very sparse documentation may produce low-confidence grades
- Rate limiting or network issues reaching Apify public metadata
- Custom criteria that are too vague may result in low-quality rubric scores

## How this service works

Vet an Apify actor before you spend on it. Send one actor ID (e.g. apify/instagram-scraper) and get scored JSON in seconds, with evidence and a verdict, from public metadata: pricing, output schema, maintenance, reliability, docs. Unlimited criteria: our pre-built set or your own rubric in plain English. Metadata grades what a vendor claims. The $1 full audit runs the actor and measures what it delivers: real cost per usable item, whether advertised fields arrive, speed and consistency.

## Output

A scored JSON object containing grades for each evaluated criterion (pricing, output schema, maintenance, reliability, documentation), supporting evidence drawn from public metadata, and an overall verdict indicating whether the actor is recommended — all returned in seconds without executing the actor.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "targets": {
   "type": "array",
   "items": {
    "type": "string"
   },
   "maxItems": 1,
   "minItems": 1,
   "description": "One Apify actor ID or URL, e.g. apify/instagram-scraper"
  },
  "customCriteria": {
   "type": "array",
   "description": "Optional custom rubric: your own criteria to score the actor against, each with a name and a plain-language description of what to measure"
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/apify-actor-preflight-8ce6eec6/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from audit-tools.ai](https://www.zero.xyz/host/audit-tools.ai/llms.txt)