# Character Encoding Transcoder

> Character Encoding Transcoder is a paid API for AI agents from encoding.openverbs.com, paid per call via x402, $0.002/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-14).

Converts base64-encoded bytes from one character encoding to another (e.g. Latin-1 to UTF-8, Windows-1252 to ASCII)

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://encoding.openverbs.com/v1/transcode
- Price: $0.002/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-14
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/character-encoding-transcoder-5fbb0768
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_V-dZhFWWzWrNaX8KLRPZV

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-transcoder-5fbb0768 -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: I have some base64-encoded bytes in Latin-1 encoding — can you transcode them to UTF-8? The bytes are 'SGVsbG8gV29ybGQ='.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need to programmatically convert raw bytes between specific character encodings — especially for legacy encodings like Latin-1, Windows-1252, ISO-8859-1, or ASCII — and the source bytes are available as base64. It is ideal for fixing encoding mismatches in data pipelines, normalizing text from legacy systems to UTF-8, or preparing bytes for systems that require a specific encoding. Prefer this over client-side libraries when operating in an agent context without direct code execution.

## Known failure modes

- Invalid or non-base64 input bytes returns a validation error
- Unsupported source or target encoding enum value returns a schema error
- Bytes that are not valid in the specified source encoding may cause a conversion error
- Empty bytes field may return an error or empty result
- Payment failure (x402) if USDC balance is insufficient

## How this service works

Decode a base64 byte buffer from one character set and re-encode it into another (utf-8, utf-16le, utf-16be, latin1, ascii). Characters that the target set cannot represent, or bytes invalid for the source set, are clean 400s.

## Output

The endpoint returns the re-encoded bytes in the target character set, allowing the agent to use the output in any downstream text processing or storage task that requires a specific character encoding.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "type": "string",
     "enum": [
      "POST"
     ]
    },
    "bodyType": {
     "type": "string",
     "enum": [
      "json",
      "form-data",
      "text"
     ]
    },
    "body": {
     "type": "object",
     "properties": {
      "bytes": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Base64-encoded source bytes."
      },
      "from": {
       "type": "string",
       "enum": [
        "utf-8",
        "utf-16le",
        "utf-16be",
        "latin1",
        "ascii",
        "utf8",
        "utf16le",
        "utf16be",
        "iso-8859-1",
        "windows-1252",
        "us-ascii"
       ],
       "description": "Source character set."
      },
      "to": {
       "type": "string",
       "enum": [
        "utf-8",
        "utf-16le",
        "utf-16be",
        "latin1",
        "ascii",
        "utf8",
        "utf16le",
        "utf16be",
        "iso-8859-1",
        "windows-1252",
        "us-ascii"
       ],
       "description": "Target character set."
      }
     },
     "required": [
      "bytes",
      "from",
      "to"
     ],
     "additionalProperties": false
    }
   },
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method",
    "bodyType",
    "body"
   ],
   "additionalProperties": false
  }
 },
 "required": [
  "input"
 ]
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/character-encoding-transcoder-5fbb0768/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)