# Character Encoding Inspector

> Character Encoding Inspector is a paid API for AI agents from encoding.openverbs.com, paid per call via x402, $0.002/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-15).

Inspects a string and returns its character encoding details

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://encoding.openverbs.com/v1/inspect
- 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/character-encoding-inspector-8ed3eef4
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_n3YyUP9JPHzmYecGzkJIs

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 character-encoding-inspector-8ed3eef4 -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Can you inspect this string for me and tell me what character encoding it's using: 'Héllo wörld — is this UTF-8, Latin-1, or something else?'

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need to programmatically detect or verify the character encoding of a string at runtime, especially during ETL pipelines, internationalization workflows, or when debugging garbled text issues. Prefer this over manual inspection or local libraries when operating in an agentic or serverless context where you need a quick, reliable API call.

## Known failure modes

- Empty or missing 'text' field returns a validation error (minLength:1 not met)
- Malformed JSON body returns a parse error
- Network timeout on the paid endpoint if the service is unavailable
- Incorrect bodyType enum value causes request rejection
- Non-POST HTTP method is rejected

## How this service works

Break a string into its Unicode code points, each with its U+ notation, decimal value and UTF-8 / UTF-16 byte layout, plus total byte lengths.

## Output

Returns character encoding details for the submitted string, including the detected encoding type and related metadata about the characters present in the input text.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method",
    "bodyType",
    "body"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "body": {
     "type": "object",
     "required": [
      "text"
     ],
     "properties": {
      "text": {
       "type": "string",
       "minLength": 1,
       "description": "String to inspect."
      }
     },
     "additionalProperties": false
    },
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "POST"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "bodyType": {
     "enum": [
      "json",
      "form-data",
      "text"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/character-encoding-inspector-8ed3eef4/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from encoding.openverbs.com](https://www.zero.xyz/host/encoding.openverbs.com/llms.txt)