# library.forgemesh.io – Ask the Odyssey

> library.forgemesh.io – Ask the Odyssey is a paid API for AI agents from library.forgemesh.io, paid per call via x402, $0.01/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-13).

Full-text passage retrieval from Homer's Odyssey: returns the most relevant excerpts with chapter and location citations for a given question.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://library.forgemesh.io/ask-the-odyssey
- Price: $0.01/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-13
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/library-forgemesh-io-ask-the-odyssey-f9538f79
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_mapdeXUYowJsMTI62PRN4

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 library-forgemesh-io-ask-the-odyssey-f9538f79 -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Search the Odyssey for passages about how Odysseus escapes the Cyclops and return the top 5 most relevant excerpts with their chapter citations.

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need verbatim cited passages from Homer's Odyssey specifically — not a summary, paraphrase, or AI-generated answer. Ideal for literary research, academic citation, fact-checking claims about the Odyssey, or grounding answers in the primary source text. If the user needs passages from a different work or a generated interpretation rather than raw retrieved text, look elsewhere.

## Known failure modes

- Question too vague or off-topic may return low-relevance passages
- Exceeding the max limit of 15 returns an error or is capped
- Payment failure (x402) if USDC is not provided or insufficient
- Empty or null question field returns a validation error
- Server unavailability returns a 5xx error

## How this service works

Ask a question about Homer's Odyssey and get back the most relevant passages from the text itself, with chapter and location citations. Retrieval only — full-text search, not a generated summary or answer. No license, no API key required.

## Output

An ordered list of up to 15 text passages from Homer's Odyssey most semantically relevant to the question, each accompanied by chapter and location citations. No AI-generated summaries or interpretations — raw source text only.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "limit": {
   "type": "integer",
   "description": "Max passages (default 5, max 15)"
  },
  "question": {
   "type": "string",
   "description": "Your question about the book, e.g. \"how does Odysseus escape the Cyclops?\""
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "count": 3,
  "title": "The Odyssey",
  "author": "Homer",
  "method": "full-text retrieval — returns the most relevant passages from the book for your question; no summarization or generation",
  "book_id": 1727,
  "passages": [
   {
    "text": "…I told him my name was [No]man, and my mother and father and all my friends, too, called me [No]man…",
    "chapter": 9,
    "location": "chapter 9, passage #55"
   }
  ],
  "question": "how does Odysseus escape the Cyclops"
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/library-forgemesh-io-ask-the-odyssey-f9538f79/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)