# PixelCove Citation Tracker – Shortlist Gate

> PixelCove Citation Tracker – Shortlist Gate is a paid API for AI agents from citation-tracker.pixelcove.co, paid per call via x402, $0.2/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-14).

Checks whether AI assistants (Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) cite your domain/brand when answering a given prompt, returning which assistants referenced your brand terms

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://citation-tracker.pixelcove.co/v1/shortlist-gate
- Price: $0.2/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-14
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/pixelcove-citation-tracker-shortlist-gate-9eba8e41
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_6kvOsdRP4D945-Oop-4rU

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 pixelcove-citation-tracker-shortlist-gate-9eba8e41 -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Check whether Perplexity or ChatGPT cites our brand 'Acme Analytics' or mentions our products 'DataPulse' and 'ReportBot' when someone asks 'what are the best data analytics tools for small businesses?'

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need to programmatically verify whether specific AI assistants cite your brand in response to a real user query — especially useful for brand monitoring, AI-SEO audits, or validating the impact of content/PR efforts on generative AI visibility. Prefer this over manual checks or social listening tools when you want structured, machine-readable citation data across multiple AI platforms simultaneously.

## Known failure modes

- Prompt exceeds 4000 characters — request rejected
- More than 20 brand terms supplied — validation error
- Free daily Perplexity quota exhausted — payment required for additional calls
- Brand term not cited despite being indexed — hits array returns empty
- AI assistant returns no structured citations — zero hits even for well-known brands
- Network timeout if AI assistant is slow to respond

## How this service works

Checks whether ChatGPT would search the web for one prompt and whether its first search query names any of your supplied brand or product terms (whole-word match). Use it to gate a prompt before spending on citation_tracker_check. Paid, $0.20/call; read-only and safe to retry.

## Output

Returns a boolean 'searched' indicating if a query was executed, a 'fanout' array listing which AI assistants were queried, and a 'hits' array of brand/product terms that were actually cited in the assistants' responses.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "required": [
  "prompt",
  "brand_terms"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "prompt": {
   "type": "string",
   "description": "The prompt to send to the search assistant(s), verbatim. 1 to 4000 characters."
  },
  "brand_terms": {
   "type": "array",
   "description": "1 to 20 brand terms to look for in the first search query."
  },
  "product_terms": {
   "type": "array",
   "description": "0 to 50 product terms to look for in the first search query."
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "required": [
  "searched",
  "fanout",
  "hits"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "hits": {
   "type": "array",
   "items": {
    "type": "string"
   }
  },
  "fanout": {
   "type": "array",
   "items": {
    "type": "string"
   }
  },
  "searched": {
   "type": "boolean"
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/pixelcove-citation-tracker-shortlist-gate-9eba8e41/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from citation-tracker.pixelcove.co](https://www.zero.xyz/host/citation-tracker.pixelcove.co/llms.txt)