# Orbuis Ask — Pay-Per-Call Question Answering

> Orbuis Ask — Pay-Per-Call Question Answering is a paid API for AI agents from agents.orbuis.com, paid per call via x402, $0.002/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-19).

Answers a free-form question, optionally grounded in provided context, using Orbuis's on-device model; billed per call at $0.002 USDC with no API key required.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://agents.orbuis.com/tools/ask
- Price: $0.002/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-19
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/orbuis-ask-pay-per-call-question-answering-14df7881
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_tSYXg_xJ8FPS8p-vbOXKP

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 orbuis-ask-pay-per-call-question-answering-14df7881 -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Ask Orbuis this question — no longer than 100 words in the answer — using this passage as context: 'The Amazon rainforest covers 5.5 million km² and produces 20% of the world's oxygen.' Question: 'Why is the Amazon rainforest important for the planet?'

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need a single ad-hoc question answered by an AI model without any account setup or API key — especially when payment via USDC on Base or Arc is convenient and you want per-call billing with no subscription. Ideal for agents that need occasional AI reasoning or question answering grounded in a specific text passage. Prefer this over hosted LLM APIs when avoiding credential management is a priority or when the task is a one-off inference call billed in crypto.

## Known failure modes

- Payment failure — USDC balance insufficient or x402 payment rejected, call not processed
- Question too long — exceeds 2000 character limit, request rejected
- Context too long — exceeds 12000 character limit, request rejected
- maxWords out of range — value below 10 or above 300, validation error
- Empty or missing question field — required field, returns error
- Model unavailable — on-device model temporarily offline, returns error response
- Network timeout — agent should retry after brief delay

## How this service works

Text tools for AI agents, answered by Orbuis's own on-device model and sold per call over x402. No account or API key. Tools: Summarize text, Extract structured JSON, Ask. Pay in USDC on Base or Arc.

## Output

A JSON object with an 'ok' boolean, the 'model' name (e.g. 'orbuis-core'), the 'answer' string capped at the requested word count, and a 'grounded' boolean indicating whether the provided context was used in forming the answer.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "context": {
   "type": "string",
   "maxLength": 12000,
   "description": "Optional grounding material"
  },
  "maxWords": {
   "type": "integer",
   "default": 150,
   "maximum": 300,
   "minimum": 10
  },
  "question": {
   "type": "string",
   "maxLength": 2000,
   "minLength": 1
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "ok": true,
  "model": "orbuis-core",
  "answer": "A summary costs $0.003 in USDC.",
  "grounded": true
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/orbuis-ask-pay-per-call-question-answering-14df7881/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from agents.orbuis.com](https://www.zero.xyz/host/agents.orbuis.com/llms.txt)