# Paul Graham Persona Corpus Retrieval

> Paul Graham Persona Corpus Retrieval is a paid API for AI agents from paulgraham.persona.energy, paid per call via x402, $0.01/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-13).

Semantically searches Paul Graham's source corpus (essays, talks, interviews, X posts) and returns grounded evidence packets with citations

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://paulgraham.persona.energy/v1/x402/entities/paul-graham/retrieve
- 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/paul-graham-persona-corpus-retrieval-4c70d50a
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_hTyAC6oTYuOTQzvJPaTCt

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 paul-graham-persona-corpus-retrieval-4c70d50a -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Search Paul Graham's essays and corpus for everything he's said about the importance of talking to users early, and give me up to 10 grounded quotes or claims with their original sources.

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need source-grounded, citable evidence from Paul Graham's specific body of work — essays, talks, interviews, and X posts — rather than a generative answer that may hallucinate. Ideal when citations and verifiability matter, such as research, debate prep, or content creation. Prefer this over general LLM queries about Paul Graham when you need direct quotes with provenance, or over a conversational Ask-PG endpoint when you want raw evidence packets rather than synthesized answers.

## Known failure modes

- Query string is empty or exceeds 1000 characters — validation error returned
- limit exceeds 100 — rejected by schema validation
- packetTypes filter contains unrecognized type strings — may return empty or partial results
- Payment not provided or insufficient USDC — x402 payment required error
- No relevant packets found for obscure or off-topic query — empty result set returned
- Network timeout on large limit requests

## How this service works

Search Paul Graham's source corpus — a source-grounded persona of the Y Combinator co-founder and essayist, built from 13,000+ cited sources: his complete essays, talks, interviews, and X posts — by semantic + lexical query and retrieve grounded packets (graded claims, quotes, evidence with citations). POST a JSON body { query, limit? (<=100), packetTypes? }. Flat micro-price per query.

## Output

Returns a list of grounded evidence packets (claims, quotes, or facts) drawn from Paul Graham's source corpus, each accompanied by citations pointing back to the original essay, talk, interview, or X post. Results are ranked by semantic and lexical relevance to the query, up to the requested limit (max 100, default 20).

## 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": [
      "query"
     ],
     "properties": {
      "limit": {
       "type": "integer",
       "maximum": 100,
       "minimum": 1,
       "description": "Maximum packets to return (default 20, matching the route default)."
      },
      "query": {
       "type": "string",
       "maxLength": 1000,
       "minLength": 1,
       "description": "Semantic + lexical search query over Paul Graham's source corpus."
      },
      "packetTypes": {
       "type": "array",
       "items": {
        "type": "string",
        "maxLength": 80
       },
       "maxItems": 20,
       "description": "Optional filter by packet type, e.g. claim, quote, fact."
      }
     }
    },
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "POST"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "bodyType": {
     "enum": [
      "json",
      "form-data",
      "text"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/paul-graham-persona-corpus-retrieval-4c70d50a/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from paulgraham.persona.energy](https://www.zero.xyz/host/paulgraham.persona.energy/llms.txt)