The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the TrustBench listing page.
Verify that x402 payments settled on-chain and get cryptographically signed
proof. POST /verify with a receipt ID or raw envelope to confirm Ed25519
signature validity + on-chain settlement on Base, no trust required.
Also routes paid x402 calls with server-side spend caps, idempotency, and a fail-safe paywall (agent isn't charged when the upstream merchant is non-conformant). Non-custodial: TrustBench never holds funds. Every paid call emits an Ed25519-signed receipt verifiable offline against a published public key.
Cross-network: routes Base today, registers Solana endpoints (Heurist Mesh, Pay.sh skills), Solana settlement next.
/rankings once the network
filter is dropped (P4-3a, see phase4-p4-3-timing.md)@trustbench/verify-receiptTrustBench ships a native MCP server so agents in Claude Desktop, Claude Cowork, ChatGPT, or Cherry Studio can look up providers, fetch receipts, and verify signatures without any HTTP-fetch workaround.
Add to claude_desktop_config.json (or your host's equivalent MCP settings file):
Restart the host app after saving. Three tools become available:
rcpt_… / rrcpt_…). No API key.Routing tools (route_quote, route_settle) require a tb_live_… API key and ship in the next MCP release. Request access by DM'ing @TrustBench on X.
POST /route at $0.005 per call (score-provider tier); full
tier table at /pricing (HTML for humans,
JSON for agents via Accept: application/json or ?format=json)api.cdp.coinbase.com/platform/v2/x402 (the public x402.org/facilitator
is testnet-only). TrustBench never holds funds; the agent's wallet
signs and the facilitator submits on-chain.TypeScript + Hono (API) + Supabase (Postgres + RLS) + ioredis (Upstash Redis cache) + tsx runtime. Deployed on Railway. Nightly probe pipeline + autonomous X posting via GitHub Actions.
Public (no auth):
GET /health — liveness check for the API itselfGET /rankings?capability=search — ranked providers for a capability (search, inference, data)GET /rankings/paid?capability=search — same as /rankings but with each provider's signed scorecardGET /route?capability=search — current best provider + fallback (legacy read-only — the Phase 3 routing surface is POST /route)GET /mcp/tools — MCP tool descriptor catalog (JSON schema). For native tool use, see the Claude Desktop / MCP section above.GET /analytics — plain HTML dashboardGET /methodology — full description of what the probe does and does not measureGET /skill.md — agent skill file in the agentic.market/skill.md format. Paste into Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Hermes, Cursor, Claude Desktop, Cherry Studio, or ChatGPT to teach the agent the TrustBench quote/settle flow as an additive policy + receipt layer on top of Coinbase Agentic Wallet.GET /llms.txt — LLM-grounded research summary in llmstxt.org formatGET /pricing — public, honest pricing for paid endpoints. Content-negotiated: HTML for humans, JSON for agents via Accept: application/json or ?format=json. Returns a 7-row tier table with live / planned (v0.2.0) / planned (v0.3.0) status badges per endpoint.GET /.well-known/trustbench.json — machine-readable manifest of TrustBench's public surfaces, capabilities, signing scheme, and discovery references. Includes an endpoints array with paid annotations matching /pricing.GET /.well-known/trustbench-pubkey — Ed25519 public key (PEM) for verifying scorecards and receiptsAuthenticated (Phase 3, in build):
POST /route — quote step. Authorization: Bearer tb_…, Idempotency-Key: <16–128 chars>, body {capability, max_price (atomic-unit string), payer_address}. Returns {route_id, payment_required, expires_at, fallback_provider}. Quote validity is 5 minutes; settling after that returns 410.POST /route/settle — settle step. Body {route_id, signature} where signature is the agent's EIP-3009 transferWithAuthorization signature. Returns {response, receipt} plus X-Receipt-Id header. Idempotent on (route_id, signature): replays return x-idempotent-replay: true with the cached receipt and never re-call the merchant.GET /receipts/:id — public, no-auth, immutable. Returns the exact signed envelope ({receipt, signature}) that was issued. Cache-Control: public, max-age=86400, immutable.Receipts are Ed25519-signed over the JCS-canonicalized form of envelope.receipt. The signature block (including public_key_url) is detached and not part of the signed bytes, so it can be overridden at verification time without invalidating the chain of trust.
Reference verifier: scripts/verify-receipt.js.
TrustBench down ≠ payments down. This is an architectural property, not a feature flag.
The agent's payment authorization is an EIP-3009 signature it produces with its own key. The merchant accepts that signature and submits the on-chain transaction. TrustBench sits between them as a router and audit layer — it constructs the quote and records the result, but it never holds funds, never signs the payment, and never broadcasts the transaction.
If the TrustBench API is unavailable, an agent can still:
/.well-known/trustbench-pubkey).What it temporarily loses while the API is down:
Existing receipts remain verifiable — the public key and JCS canonicalization rules are stable, and the receipt's audit_url is a hint, not a dependency.
POST /route is paywalled when TRUSTBENCH_PAYWALL_ENABLED=true on the deployment. The flow is x402-native end-to-end:
POST /route with no X-PAYMENT header.402 Payment Required with x402 payment requirements pointing at the TrustBench revenue wallet on Base. Price: $0.005 USDC.transferWithAuthorization for the routing fee and retries the call with an X-PAYMENT header carrying the signed envelope (use any x402 client; the modular @x402/core + @x402/evm SDKs are the reference).api.cdp.coinbase.com/platform/v2/x402, settles it on-chain, selects the best provider via the live registry, and returns 200 with an Ed25519-signed routing receipt plus payment requirements for the agent's NEXT call (to the upstream provider).Two payments per call (TrustBench fee + provider fee), both non-custodial. Receipts cover the routing decision; the provider transaction is a separate x402 envelope the agent owns end-to-end.
Discovery. Paid endpoints carry paid: true annotations alongside the free ones in /skill.md and /.well-known/trustbench.json. v0.2.0+ endpoints are listed with available_in tags so agent builders see the roadmap shape.
Verifying a routing receipt. Same Ed25519 + JCS canonicalization as Phase 3 settlement receipts, with kind: "paid_response.route". Use the npm verifier:
Server-side controls (v0.1.1). Two safeguards run on every paywalled call:
agent_address. Tunable via TRUSTBENCH_PAYWALL_HOURLY_LIMIT (set to 0 to disable). Returns 429 with Retry-After: 60 when exceeded.replayed_at marker. Idempotency-Key header (16-128 chars) honored on every paywalled call. Same key + same body within 24 hours returns the original signed receipt with a top-level replayed_at field added outside the signed bytes — original signature stays valid, downstream consumers can distinguish fresh from replayed. Same key + different body returns 409.Failure modes. Documented in detail in the Critic-pass header at the top of src/paywall-handler.ts. Live facilitator is the Coinbase CDP facilitator at api.cdp.coinbase.com/platform/v2/x402; the original "Foundation facilitator first, swap to CDP later" plan was disproven on 2026-05-11 when settle-tests confirmed the Foundation facilitator is testnet-only (see lessons.md 2026-05-11 entry). Current hidden assumption: CDP facilitator stays stable and within plan limits. Kill criterion: if CDP returns 5xx or auth-errors >5% of calls in the first 4 weeks, fall back to PayAI-mediated settlement.
These are limits in the current implementation, called out so consumers don't infer behavior the system doesn't actually deliver:
POST /route serves one capability against one selected provider per call. Multi-merchant fan-out (one intent → multiple paid APIs → one envelope) is Phase 4.The probe is a HEAD-request liveness check from a single host, three samples per provider per night. Status codes 200, 201, 204, 401, 402, 403, 404, 405, and 429 are treated as alive (the provider is responding; only the auth/payment gate is closed).
This is not a benchmark in the rigorous sense. Latency is wall-clock from a single network vantage. Score latencyHealth is derived from linear-interpolation percentiles across the cohort — useful as a relative signal, not as a service-level claim. Full description at /methodology.
MIT.