For AI agents

Search, pay-per-call.
No key. No account.

TRACE exposes an agent-native API priced per request over x402. An agent needs a funded wallet and nothing else — no signup, no key management.

Want the full picture — why TRACE is the first x402-native RAG & multimedia search engine, how to wire it as your retrieval layer, and a catalog of agent use cases (with architecture and sequence diagrams)? Read the complete agent guide.

Zero to searching

Hand this to your agent

Not sure where to start? Copy the prompt below and give it to any capable AI agent — one that can make HTTP calls and hold a wallet. It sets TRACE up end to end: read the docs, pay over x402, ingest your corpus, and retrieve — with no account and no API key.

Set up TRACE as my private, pay-per-call retrieval backend, end to end.

1. Read https://trace-cloud.aioniq.ai/agents.txt and https://trace-cloud.aioniq.ai/agents.md
   so you know the API, the prices, and the code of conduct — then follow that
   conduct throughout.
2. Make sure you have a wallet funded with a small amount of USDC on Base (network
   eip155:8453). That wallet is your identity and how you pay — there is no account
   and no API key. If you don't have one, tell me and stop.
3. Point your x402 client (or the @x402/mcp tool) at https://trace-cloud.aioniq.ai. Every
   paid call returns HTTP 402 with payment terms in accepts[]; sign the USDC
   authorization and retry.
4. Ingest my corpus: POST each document to /agent/v1/ingest (multipart/form-data).
   Ingest only data I have the right to index.
5. Retrieve: POST /agent/v1/search with {"query": "...", "k": 8}. Ground your
   answers in the returned passages and cite each by its locator (page / time_s /
   chunk).
6. When you are done, stop — the index disposes itself and nothing persists. Report
   back what you ingested, two or three sample searches with results, and the total
   USDC you spent.

Prices are quoted live in every 402 response, so your agent never needs a key from us. Want the mechanics first? See the four-step cycle below.

The four-step cycle

Call the endpoint with your query.
Receive HTTP 402 with payment requirements in the body (accepts[]: scheme, network, pay-to wallet, price, resource).
Pay — sign a USDC transfer authorization and put it in the X-PAYMENT header.
Retry — the gate verifies + settles, provisions a disposable sandbox keyed to your payer address, runs the search, and returns results plus an X-PAYMENT-RESPONSE receipt.

The 402 you get back

POST https://trace-cloud.aioniq.ai/agent/v1/search
{ "query": "orange sunset over dunes", "families": ["visual"], "k": 10 }

HTTP/1.1 402 Payment Required
{
  "x402Version": 1,
  "error": "payment required",
  "resource": "https://trace-cloud.aioniq.ai/agent/v1/search",
  "description": "Semantic + reverse-image search over an ephemeral private index",
  "accepts": [{
    "scheme": "exact",
    "network": "eip155:8453",
    "payTo": "0x6aA5C11dEFbD9dDc5c0dEB018A280629348d79A5",
    "maxAmountRequired": "$0.006",
    "resource": "https://trace-cloud.aioniq.ai/agent/v1/search"
  }]
}

Python (with the x402 client)

from x402.client import x402Client
import httpx

# the client handles the 402 -> sign -> retry dance for you
client = x402Client(account=my_wallet)          # a funded Base account
r = httpx.post(
    "https://trace-cloud.aioniq.ai/agent/v1/search",
    json={"query": "orange sunset over dunes", "k": 10},
    auth=client.auth,                            # signs X-PAYMENT on the 402
)
print(r.json()["hits"])
print("receipt:", r.headers["X-PAYMENT-RESPONSE"])

Raw curl (manual payment)

# 1. probe for terms
curl -s -X POST https://trace-cloud.aioniq.ai/agent/v1/search \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"query":"orange sunset over dunes"}'          # -> 402 + accepts[]

# 2. sign the USDC authorization off the accepts[] terms, then retry
curl -s -X POST https://trace-cloud.aioniq.ai/agent/v1/search \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -H "X-PAYMENT: $SIGNED_PAYLOAD_B64" \
  -d '{"query":"orange sunset over dunes"}'          # -> 200 + results + receipt

Endpoints

Endpoint	Price	Does
`POST /agent/v1/search`	$0.006	Semantic, cross-modal, or reverse-image search
`POST /agent/v1/ingest`	$0.03	Add a file to your ephemeral index
`GET /agent/v1/items/{id}`	$0.002	Fetch an item's metadata

Each paying wallet gets its own gVisor-sandboxed index with a TTL. It holds nothing on disk and is recycled after the window closes. Full request/response shapes are in the OpenAPI spec.

Discovery

TRACE's paid endpoints emit Bazaar-compatible 402 metadata, so agents that speak the x402 Bazaar discovery layer can find and price this service without any prior integration. Point your agent's MCP x402 tool at https://trace-cloud.aioniq.ai.

Search, pay-per-call.No key. No account.