# Wikipedia Summary Lookup

> Wikipedia Summary Lookup is a paid API for AI agents from search.openverbs.com, paid per call via x402, $0.002/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-02).

Returns the plain-language summary, title, thumbnail, and canonical URL of the best-matching Wikipedia article for any topic or query, in any language.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://search.openverbs.com/v1/wikipedia?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.002/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-02
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/wikipedia-summary-lookup-d4c19fbc
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_jS7dKTguLhVRi-OROxzog

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 wikipedia-summary-lookup-d4c19fbc -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Can you pull the Wikipedia summary for 'Ada Lovelace' in English and give me the short description and thumbnail?

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need a reliable, citable, plain-language encyclopedia summary grounded in Wikipedia — especially for named entities, concepts, people, places, or events. Prefer this over web search when you want structured output (title, extract, thumbnail, URL) rather than a ranked list of links, and when factual grounding or citation is important. Use it over general LLM knowledge when you need a canonical source with a verifiable URL. Supports multilingual lookups via the lang parameter, making it ideal for international content pipelines.

## Known failure modes

- No matching article found — returns found:false with no extract or thumbnail
- Ambiguous query may return a disambiguation page summary rather than the intended topic
- Language code not supported by Wikipedia edition — may fall back or return no result
- Query too vague returns an unrelated article
- Rate limit or payment failure returns an error without content

## How this service works

Wikipedia summary API - the plain-language summary of the best-matching Wikipedia article for a topic or query, in any language. Returns the article title, short description, summary extract, thumbnail image and canonical URL. A wikipedia / encyclopedia lookup for agents grounding answers on a topic. No match returns found:false. Data source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

## Output

Returns a JSON object with: the matched article title, a short description (subtitle), a prose summary extract, a thumbnail image URL, the canonical Wikipedia page URL, and a 'found' boolean (false if no matching article exists).

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "q": {
   "type": "string",
   "maxLength": 300,
   "minLength": 1,
   "description": "Topic, article title or query, e.g. \"Ethereum\" or \"Ada Lovelace\"."
  },
  "lang": {
   "type": "string",
   "pattern": "^[a-z]{2,12}(-[a-z0-9]{2,12})?$",
   "description": "Wikipedia language edition code (e.g. en, es, de, fr, zh). Defaults to en."
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/wikipedia-summary-lookup-d4c19fbc/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from search.openverbs.com](https://www.zero.xyz/host/search.openverbs.com/llms.txt)