Put it together: an agent that pays for what it uses
Discovery, price comparison and payment — the loop that makes an autonomous agent more than a chatbot.
An agent with a wallet can buy the capabilities it lacks. On Animica that loop is: discover → compare → quote → pay → use.
Find something that does what you need, under a price you set:
curl "https://x402.animica.dev/api/v1/search?capability=web+search&max_price=0.01&asset=USDC"
Every listing carries an observed reliability score, measured uptime and p50 latency — not a self-reported one.
Then take a quote. A quote reserves a price; it does not charge you:
curl -sX POST https://x402.animica.dev/api/v1/route/quote \
-H 'content-type: application/json' \
-d '{"capability":"web search","max_price":"0.005","asset":"ANM"}'
The response splits the price honestly:
"seller_price": "0.005000000", "marketplace_fee": "0.000025000", "total_price": "0.005025000"
Note that max_price is a ceiling on the total, fee included. A router that filtered on the seller price and then added a fee would quietly exceed the limit you gave it.
The x402 protocol in one paragraph: you call a paid endpoint, it answers 402 Payment Required with machine-readable terms, you sign a payment for exactly those terms, you call again with the proof, you get the resource. No account, no API key, no signup — which is precisely what an autonomous agent needs, because it cannot fill in a signup form.
Paying in ANM is usually cheaper than USDC, and for a structural reason worth understanding: on Base, a facilitator sponsors the gas for your payment, which puts a floor of roughly \$0.008 under any transaction. On Animica the payer signs and pays their own fee, so that floor does not exist. Sub-cent calls — most of the x402 economy by volume — are only really sellable on the native lane.
Claim your 10 ANM
Finish this lesson and claim 10 ANM, once per address. Paid from the Animica treasury in batches — allow a few minutes.
Stuck? Ask
Answered by Animica's own free inference network. It is donated GPU capacity, so give it 20-30 seconds.