How It Works

1. Your agent calls a Pylon API endpoint
2. Gets back HTTP 402 with payment details
3. Pays $0.01-0.05 USDC on Base, retries → gets the response

x402-compatible clients handle this automatically. One round-trip.

Live APIs (20+)

All APIs run on Fly.io with scale-to-zero. No third-party API dependencies.

Quick Start

# Take a screenshot (will return 402 — use an x402 client for auto-payment)
curl -X POST https://pylon-screenshot-api.fly.dev/screenshot \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com", "width": 1280, "height": 720}'

With an x402-compatible client:

import { wrapFetch } from "@x402/fetch";

const fetch402 = wrapFetch(fetch, wallet);

const response = await fetch402("https://pylon-screenshot-api.fly.dev/screenshot", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
  body: JSON.stringify({ url: "https://example.com" }),
});

// Screenshot PNG returned directly

MCP Server

Use all Pylon APIs from Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible tool:

npx @pylonapi/mcp

Or install globally: npm i -g @pylonapi/mcp

See the MCP server on npm or browse it on Smithery.

Orchestration — /do/chain

Chain multiple Pylon APIs in a single request. The orchestration endpoint lets agents describe a pipeline of API calls where outputs flow into inputs:

POST https://pylonapi.com/do/chain
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "steps": [
    { "api": "web-scrape", "params": { "url": "https://example.com" } },
    { "api": "md-to-pdf", "params": { "markdown": "{{steps.0.output}}" } }
  ]
}

Each step runs sequentially. Reference previous outputs with {{steps.N.output}}. Payment covers all steps in the chain. One request, one payment, multiple operations.

Why No API Keys?

API keys are a bottleneck for autonomous agents. An agent can't sign up for accounts, enter credit cards, or manage billing dashboards. x402 lets payment be authentication — if you can pay, you can use the API. No human in the loop.

Self-Hosting

Every API is a standalone Express server. Clone this repo and deploy your own:

cd apis/screenshot
npm install
npm start

Remove the x402 middleware if you don't need payments. MIT licensed.

Stack

• Runtime: Node.js + Express
• Payments: x402 — HTTP 402 micropayments
• Settlement: USDC on Base
• Hosting: Fly.io (scale-to-zero)
• No external API deps: Puppeteer, Sharp, Tesseract, pdf-parse — all self-hosted

Links

• 🌐 pylonapi.com
• 🐦 @pylonx402
• 🔌 MCP Server
• 📖 x402 Protocol

Adding Your Own API

Want to add an API to Pylon? See PROVIDERS.md for the full onboarding guide and check out the provider-template/ for a starter repo.

License

MIT