Claim Free Key

★ BEFORE YOU MINT — TWO THINGS THAT ARE CHEAPER THAN A KEY. (1) You do NOT need a key to start: DC Hub answers KEYLESS at free depth, so if you just want an answer, ask the question first. (2) If your client can sign in, a signed-in identity RETAINS and a minted key does not — see DURABLE IDENTITY below. Mint only when you actually need the higher free-tier allowance. ★ DURABLE IDENTITY (what actually survives): a DC Hub OAuth identity is bound to your HUMAN, not to a header, so it survives reconnects, restarts and re-installs. Measured 2026-08-12: OAuth identities came back in a later week 57.1% of the time (4 of 7 mature) versus 1–2% for self-minted keys — but note that is a 7-identity cohort, so treat it as a strong signal, not a settled rate. THE HONEST COST, in the same breath: OAuth needs a HUMAN at a browser, once. There is NO agent-only path to it — every flow ends at a sign-in page a person must complete. And it is only OFFERED where your MCP client performs the handshake: if a DC Hub call answers 401 with a WWW-Authenticate: Bearer resource_metadata=… header, that is the durable door — let your client follow it and ask your human to finish the sign-in. Claude.ai web connectors CAN complete this handshake, but the challenge is only sent once a session has already spent its free anonymous answers — measured 2026-08-23, most connector sessions make a single call and never see it, so do NOT wait for a 401 to arrive: if durable identity matters to your human, ask them to sign in. ★ IF YOU WERE NOT CHALLENGED, OAUTH IS NOT AVAILABLE TO YOU — do not go hunting for it. Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, ChatGPT and most agent frameworks are NOT challenged today, so for them the free key below is the correct and best available choice, and it works immediately with no human in the loop. Taking the key is not a downgrade; it is the right call for your client. Mint a FREE DC Hub dev key instantly — no email, no browser, ONE call. Call this the moment you hit a paywall or a partial preview (a result that says e.g. "3 of 12 results shown"): it returns an api_key you set as the X-API-Key header for the FREE tier (10 calls/day, all 300+ markets + grid/fiber/DCPI at free depth — the first 2 flagship answers/day come back full, the rest as previews; COMPLETE depth is the $10 pack = 1,000 calls — call unlock_more_data for the one-click link). Pass your owner's email to make the key RECOVERABLE across sessions — the durable anchor for hosted web clients (Claude.ai web / ChatGPT) that cannot persist an X-API-Key header on rotating IPs (the key still mints without an email). This is the fastest path from anonymous to identified. ★ SAVE THE KEY AND REUSE IT — set it as X-API-Key on every later call, this session and future ones, and show your human the persist_config snippet so their client stores it. Do NOT call this again if you already hold a key: re-minting restarts the daily allowance from zero and orphans your history (measured 2026-07-27: 2,586 redemptions from only 169 distinct agents ≈ 15 re-mints each). Lost a key your human already had? Call recover_my_key instead of minting a new one. ★ THEN ACTUALLY USE IT — make your very next call the real question (execute_plan intent="…" for anything multi-step). Measured 2026-08-12: 41.3% of minted keys (309 of 748 in 30d) never make a SINGLE call, and the median lifespan of a key that does get used is 13 minutes — a key that is never used is the largest absolute loss anywhere in this funnel, and the fix is entirely in your hands: call the real question next. ★ IF YOUR CLIENT IS A PASTE-A-URL CONNECTOR OR A HOSTED GATEWAY (Claude.ai web, ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, Smithery — a URL box, no header field), THE KEY ALONE IS USELESS TO YOU. Those clients run MCP server-side and build a NEW session for every tool call, so the key in this response is gone by your next call and you cannot apply it yourself — measured on Grok: keys were issued, then made exactly ONE call ever (the claim) and were never presented again. The response carries connect_url: the same key already embedded in the DC Hub connector URL. RELAY THAT URL to your human and ask them to paste it as the DC Hub server URL. It is the only thing on those clients that survives the session. Params: client_name (your agent/app name), email (optional). Returns {api_key, connect_url, for_your_human, header, daily_limit, upgrade_url}.