An agent that needs one fact from the web usually does three things: search, fetch the top pages, then read them with its own model. That is three round trips and a lot of tokens spent on navigation menus.
Agent Research does it in one paid call. You send a question, it searches, reads the top result pages and returns a short written answer where every claim carries the number of the page it came from. If the pages do not answer the question, it says so and you are not charged.
It costs $0.03 per answer in USDC on Base over x402. No account, no API key.
Ten lines of Python
# pip install "x402[evm,requests]"
import os
from eth_account import Account
from x402 import x402ClientSync
from x402.http.clients import x402_requests
from x402.mechanisms.evm import EthAccountSigner
from x402.mechanisms.evm.exact import ExactEvmScheme
client = x402ClientSync()
client.register("eip155:8453", ExactEvmScheme(EthAccountSigner(Account.from_key(os.environ["PK"]))))
session = x402_requests(client)
r = session.get("https://search.cyberwarex.com/answer",
params={"q": "How do AI agents pay for APIs with x402?"})
res = r.json()
print(res["answer"])
for s in res["sources"]:
print(f"[{s.get('ref')}] {s['url']}")
PK is a Base wallet with a little USDC. The client reads the 402 invoice, signs the payment and retries on its own.
A real answer
I ran exactly that script before publishing. It returned:
AI agents use the HTTP-native x402 protocol to pay for APIs through a request-response cycle involving the agent, the API's resource server, and an onchain facilitator [1]. Agents are given tools to access a wallet, make transactions, and process x402 headers using an HTTP client that auto-handles payment challenges [4]. Sellers publish a paid endpoint where the agents make USDC stablecoin nanopayments directly to the seller's wallet [1][3].
with the three cited pages listed underneath.
How it stays grounded
- The writing step only sees numbered excerpts pulled from the pages it read.
- An answer without citations is rejected, and the service falls back to quoting the pages directly.
- "The sources found do not answer this" is a valid answer, and it is free.
Cheaper options from the same service
| Call | Returns | Price |
|---|---|---|
/search |
ranked results with snippets | $0.003 |
/search-contents |
results plus the readable text of the top pages, you write the answer | $0.006 |
/answer |
a short written answer with citations | $0.03 |
You can try one answer free by adding the header X-Free-Trial: 1, and GET https://search.cyberwarex.com/sample shows a real paid response with its on-chain receipt.
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