# ForgeMesh Library Book Search

> ForgeMesh Library Book Search is a paid API for AI agents from library.forgemesh.io, paid per call via x402, $0.005/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-14).

Search a public-domain book corpus by title or author substring, returning ranked matches with book IDs for further exploration

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://library.forgemesh.io/book-search
- Price: $0.005/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-14
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/forgemesh-library-book-search-a50629e3
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_lcbHkwRSds4F2Zt0EvGpw

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 forgemesh-library-book-search-a50629e3 -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Search the ForgeMesh public-domain library for books by 'Jules Verne' and return the top 5 results with their book IDs.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need to discover books by title or author name across the entire public-domain corpus, especially when you don't know the exact book_id yet. It is the natural entry point before drilling into metadata, chapters, quotes, or full-text search on sibling endpoints. Prefer this over genre-specific shelf endpoints when the user's query spans multiple genres or when searching by author name across categories.

## Known failure modes

- No matching books found for the query substring — returns empty results list
- Query string too vague or too short — may return irrelevant or overly broad results
- Limit exceeds maximum of 50 — may be clamped or return an error
- Payment of 0.005 USDC not fulfilled — x402 payment required error
- Network or service unavailability — connection timeout or 5xx error

## How this service works

Search the indexed public-domain book corpus by title or author substring. Returns matching books ranked by historical popularity with book_id for drill-down into metadata, chapters, quotes, or full-text search. No license, no API key required.

## Output

A ranked list of matching public-domain books (up to the requested limit), each with a book_id, title, and author information, sorted by historical popularity. The book_id can be used with sibling endpoints for chapter access, quote retrieval, or full-text search.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "limit": {
   "type": "integer",
   "description": "Max results (default 10, max 50)"
  },
  "query": {
   "type": "string",
   "description": "Title or author substring, e.g. \"Dickens\" or \"Frankenstein\""
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "books": [
   {
    "year": "2004",
    "title": "A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas",
    "author": "Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870",
    "book_id": 46,
    "subjects": [
     "Ghost stories"
    ],
    "download_count": 70650
   }
  ],
  "count": 2,
  "query": "Dickens",
  "coverage": {
   "target": 1000,
   "indexed": 865
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/forgemesh-library-book-search-a50629e3/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from library.forgemesh.io](https://www.zero.xyz/host/library.forgemesh.io/llms.txt)