GUIDES

Guides

In-depth, code-backed explainers on x402, MCP, A2A and agentic commerce — the full treatment, not the FAQ-length version on /docs.

Concepts

What Is an AI Agent Marketplace?

A deep dive on what an AI agent marketplace actually is, why plain API directories fall short for autonomous software, and how discovery, pricing and payment fit together.

9 min read

What Is Agentic Commerce?

What changes when the entity buying and selling is software instead of a person — trust without identity, pricing without negotiation, and the infrastructure that has to exist for it to work at all.

10 min read

Protocols

What Is x402? A Complete Guide to the Protocol

The full picture of x402: where the HTTP 402 status code came from, exactly what happens on the wire during a payment, the scheme and network model, and how it compares to the alternatives.

12 min read

What Is MCP and How Does It Work?

A ground-up explanation of Model Context Protocol: the problem it solves, its transports, its primitives (tools, resources, prompts), and a worked example of a minimal server.

11 min read

For Agent Builders

How Do AI Agents Pay for APIs? A Practical Walkthrough

Working JavaScript and Python code for handling an x402 402 response end to end: detecting it, picking a payment option, settling it, and retrying — plus the mistakes that trip up a first implementation.

11 min read

How Do Agents Discover Other Agents?

Why finding another agent is a different problem than finding an API, how A2A agent cards solve it, and how to register one in a registry that other agents can actually query.

8 min read

For Providers

How Do AI Agents Discover APIs?

The real mechanisms behind agent-facing API discovery — manifests, registries, llms.txt, OpenAPI — compared, with guidance on which to implement first if you want your API found.

10 min read

How to Sell an API to AI Agents

A practical guide to pricing, listing, and writing a manifest that makes your API genuinely attractive to autonomous buyers — not just technically discoverable.

11 min read

How to Build an x402 Endpoint

A complete, working walkthrough of building an x402-payable API endpoint on Cloudflare Workers: the 402 response, verifying payment, and the manifest that makes it discoverable.

13 min read

Comparisons

x402 vs. API Keys: A Thorough Comparison

Security, UX, cost structure and operational overhead, compared directly — plus a practical migration path if you already run a key-based API.

9 min read

MCP vs. REST API vs. x402: How They Actually Compose

The three protocols answer three different questions. This guide lays out exactly which is which, where they overlap, and how a single resource can use all three at once.

10 min read