AxonGate

Safe web access for AI agents. Read any public page as clean Markdown, search the live web, get grounded answers, fact-check claims and check a crypto token before trading it. Every page is screened for prompt injection, and every quote in an answer or verdict is checked verbatim against the fetched source. Agents pay per call in USDC on Base, Polygon or Arbitrum (Solana when configured) over x402: no account, no API key, charged only on success.

Live: api.axongate.one · docs · x402 catalog · llms.txt · OpenAPI

MCP: hosted at https://api.axongate.one/mcp (each tool call paid via the x402 MCP transport), or run locally with mcp/ (npx axongate-mcp). Agent skill: skills/axongate.

Why v2

v1 (Proof Packs, Stripe bundles, tiered extraction at $0.012–$1.00) logged ~40k payment challenges and zero outside paid calls in six months. Most of that traffic was x402 directories crawling each other. The October 2026 relaunch is built from what agents actually pay for in the Coinbase Bazaar (30-day paid calls by category):

• Price to market. Web reads sell at $0.001–0.002 and searches at $0.007–0.025, so AxonGate's prices match or undercut them. Margins hold because reads are extracted locally (no supplier cost) and search costs about $0.0005.

• Get indexed where buyers look. Bazaar only lists endpoints that settle through the CDP facilitator. v1 used PayAI and was never listed. v2 settles through CDP and declares full Bazaar metadata on every product.

• Differentiate on safety. Prompt-injection screening is built into every read, a standalone scan endpoint is offered, and verbatim quote checks stop a model from inventing evidence.

• Keep the existing listings. The /v1/x402/access and /v1/x402/proof-pack URLs that directories already list now serve Safe Read and Claim Verify.

Related MCP server: Secant Agent Research

How a call works

1. The agent calls an endpoint and gets 402 with PAYMENT-REQUIRED: one exact-scheme USDC entry per network (Base eip155:8453 first, then Polygon and Arbitrum to payTo 0xcD11…76A7, and Solana when AXONGATE_SOLANA_PAY_TO is set).

2. Its x402 client signs an EIP-3009 authorization and retries with PAYMENT-SIGNATURE.

3. AxonGate does the work. The x402 middleware settles only if the response is 2xx, so errors are never charged.

/v1/answer and /v1/verify run search, then concurrent reads (cached in Redis), then passage selection, then one structured gpt-5-mini call. Quotes the model returns are matched against the fetched text. Unmatched quotes are dropped, and a supported or refuted verdict without a matched quote is downgraded to insufficient.

Layout

axongate/
  app.py         FastAPI app, product handlers, operator metrics, retired-route handling
  config.py      environment, product catalog and prices
  payments.py    x402 routes, CDP/PayAI facilitator, Bazaar metadata
  fetcher.py     SSRF-safe fetch, trafilatura extraction, Jina rendered fallback
  search.py      Jina search with caching
  research.py    answer/verify pipeline and quote verification
  safety.py      rule-based prompt-injection scanner
  tokens.py      token-check verdicts (GoPlus Security + honeypot.is simulation)
  mcp_server.py  hosted MCP endpoint (/mcp) with per-call x402 payment
  llm.py         structured-output chat client
  store.py       Redis cache/counters with in-memory fallback, rate limiter
  telemetry.py   ASGI middleware: rate limits, challenges, settlements, revenue
  discovery.py   /.well-known/x402, manifest, agent card, llms.txt, pricing
  pages.py       home, docs and bot pages
axongate_gateway.py   entry point kept for `uvicorn axongate_gateway:app`
scripts/ci_smoke.py   offline test suite (x402 surface + mocked handlers)
scripts/paid_smoke.py real paid calls from a CDP account (operator tool)
mcp/                  local MCP server, published to npm as axongate-mcp
skills/axongate/      agent skill (SKILL.md) for the MCP tools; listed on skill marketplaces
examples/             Python client, curl

Run locally

python3 -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
cp .env.example .env   # fill in what you need; everything degrades gracefully
uvicorn axongate_gateway:app --reload --port 8000

Set AXONGATE_X402_ENABLED=false to call the handlers without paying.

Test

python scripts/ci_smoke.py      # no network suppliers, no USDC
python scripts/secret_scan.py

Operate

• GET /metrics with X-AxonGate-Operator-Token shows revenue, supplier cost, settled calls, 402 challenges per product and per path, and top paying clients.

• python scripts/paid_smoke.py --account <buyer> --max-spend 0.05 makes real paid calls. It's needed once per endpoint for Bazaar indexing, and again every 30 days to keep a listing alive when there is no buyer traffic.

• Railway runs uvicorn axongate_gateway:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port $PORT with /health as the health check. web and Redis services are in the production environment.

See docs/distribution.md for listings.

Licence

MIT — see LICENSE.