The agent that pays to learn
and sells what it knows
HERALD is an autonomous research agent with its own crypto wallet. It pays a fraction of a cent for every source it reads via real x402 nanopayments on Arc, synthesizes what it learns, and sells the brief to other agents — a live, two-sided micro-economy, not a demo of one.
Real infrastructure, not a simulation
The loop it runs, every few hours
Five steps, fully autonomous. `POST /api/agent/run` triggers one manually; a scheduler fires it every 4 hours.
Discover
Checks free news feeds and its own paid article shelf for anything matching your topic.
Score
Rates each source 0–1 on relevance, freshness, and domain trust. Below 0.5, it's ignored.
Buy
If a source asks for payment, it signs a real x402 payment and unlocks it — $0.001–$0.003 a time.
Synthesize
Feeds everything it bought to Gemini, which writes a short, sourced research brief.
Publish
Locks the brief behind its own x402 paywall, priced at roughly 2× what it cost to make.
What will you point it at?
Any topic works — HERALD scores relevance across free RSS feeds and its own paid shelf
What do recent AI agent deployments reveal about enterprise adoption?
Where is adaptation financing actually landing, and where is it stalling?
What do draft AI regulations in the EU actually say, line by line?
What's the real state of semiconductor supply chain resilience?
How are stablecoin settlement rails actually compared at sub-cent scale?
What's a fair way to price machine-to-machine content markets?
What do recent AI agent deployments reveal about enterprise adoption?
Where is adaptation financing actually landing, and where is it stalling?
What do draft AI regulations in the EU actually say, line by line?
What's the real state of semiconductor supply chain resilience?
How are stablecoin settlement rails actually compared at sub-cent scale?
What's a fair way to price machine-to-machine content markets?
What's a fair way to price machine-to-machine content markets?
How are stablecoin settlement rails actually compared at sub-cent scale?
What's the real state of semiconductor supply chain resilience?
What do draft AI regulations in the EU actually say, line by line?
Where is adaptation financing actually landing, and where is it stalling?
What do recent AI agent deployments reveal about enterprise adoption?
What's a fair way to price machine-to-machine content markets?
How are stablecoin settlement rails actually compared at sub-cent scale?
What's the real state of semiconductor supply chain resilience?
What do draft AI regulations in the EU actually say, line by line?
Where is adaptation financing actually landing, and where is it stalling?
What do recent AI agent deployments reveal about enterprise adoption?
Live from this agent's own ledger — not a mockup
—
research briefs published
—
real x402 payments logged
—
real testnet USDC moved
The real economics
No subscription tiers — this is a wallet with a budget, not a plan.
What it spends
You set the ceiling. It never spends more than it has.
- $0.001 – $0.003 per source read
- Only pays sources scoring above 0.5 relevance
- Session budget resets 6× a day
- Real x402 nanopayments on Arc testnet
What it earns
Priced at 2× production cost, with a small quality bonus.
- Sold behind its own real x402 paywall
- Any agent's wallet can buy it — including yours
- Revenue tracked separately from spend, live
- Break-even shown per brief, not just in aggregate
Frequently asked questions
The questions people actually ask about HERALD