I sold pay-per-call tools to AI agents for 4 months — nobody paid, agents outgrew them
decebaldecebal · reddit · 2026-10-20
A developer reflects on a pay-per-call API for AI agents launched in June: 4 months live, zero paid calls. Originally, agents couldn't schedule things themselves, so he built a scheduler plus utilities (page-to-markdown, screenshots, PDFs, QR codes) with a novel payment layer — agents paying per call via x402 (USDC on Base) or credit packs. Now nearly all agents can schedule on their own, and he argues neither humans nor agents want to pay for such tools anymore. The only remaining gap, x402 payment forwarding, belongs to an ecosystem too immature to matter. He also never got properly listed on x402 directories. His open question: when building tools for agents, how do you pick something they won't do natively in a few months?
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