# Shovels API — Building Permit Address Search

> Shovels API — Building Permit Address Search is a paid API for AI agents from stable-shovels.dev, paid per call via x402, $0.05/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-15, last successful call 2026-07-13).

Search US building permits by address, date range, and contractor via pay-per-call API with no subscription required

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://stable-shovels.dev/api/addresses/search
- Price: $0.05/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-15
- Last successful call: 2026-07-13
- Success rate: 67% of calls made through Zero
- Rating: 4.3 / 5 from 1 review
- Activations on Zero: 5
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/shovels-api-building-permit-address-search-3ab4fd7c
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_U7XktQ1EZ8SFFhHP1A32q

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 shovels-api-building-permit-address-search-3ab4fd7c -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Search Shovels for building permits at 123 Main Street, Austin TX, filed between January 2023 and December 2023 — I want to see what contractors pulled permits there and what work was done.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need on-demand, no-subscription access to US building permit data searchable by address, location, date, or contractor — especially useful for one-off lookups or infrequent queries where paying $0.50 per call via x402/USDC is preferable to maintaining a subscription account.

## Known failure modes

- Payment failure or insufficient USDC balance returns 402 Payment Required
- Invalid or unrecognized address returns empty results or 400 Bad Request
- Date range outside available data coverage returns empty results
- Malformed request body returns 422 Unprocessable Entity
- Rate limits or server errors return 429 or 500 status codes

## How this service works

Pay-per-call access to the Shovels building-permits search API over x402 and MPP. Search US building permits by date, location, and contractor — no accounts, no subscriptions, pay per request.

## Output

Returns a list of matching US building permit records including permit dates, addresses, contractor names, permit types, and status information based on the search criteria provided.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "q": {
   "type": "string",
   "minLength": 1,
   "description": "The term to search for."
  },
  "size": {
   "type": "integer",
   "maximum": 100,
   "minimum": 1,
   "description": "Records to return per page (1–100, default 50). Determines the price — each record returned costs one credit."
  },
  "cursor": {
   "type": "string",
   "description": "Pagination cursor — pass the `next_cursor` from a prior page."
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/shovels-api-building-permit-address-search-3ab4fd7c/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from stable-shovels.dev](https://www.zero.xyz/host/stable-shovels.dev/llms.txt)