Blog

Khotan Case Study: Cheap, Accurate Lead Data With o11

Khotan (YC W26) gets accurate contact data from ten providers through one o11 card, paying per lookup with no subscriptions or onboarding.

Tool platforms

OpenRouter for Tools: One API for Agent Capabilities

Understand the OpenRouter for tools idea: shared access to agent capabilities, with clear account choices, useful workflows, and recovery.

Developer guides

Claude Code Tools: Add Paid APIs Through o11 MCP

Configure Claude Code for o11 over HTTP MCP, inspect eligible operations, authorize one bounded task, and retain results for recovery.

Workflows

Build a Company Research Agent

Build a company research agent with evidence-linked search, page retrieval, selective enrichment, clear budgets, and a reviewable supplier brief.

Comparisons

Nevermined vs Composio vs o11: Paid Tools for Agents

Compare paid-tool access, connected accounts, setup effort, and execution evidence across o11, Composio Instant, and Nevermined.

Tool platforms

What Is an AI Tool Gateway? A Practical Guide

A practical guide to AI tool gateways: discovery, account access, execution contracts, and the recovery behavior developers should evaluate.

Developer guides

Cursor Agent Tools: Search, Research, and Media

Configure Cursor for o11 over remote MCP, use search and media tools deliberately, and preserve project artifacts and invocation recovery.

Workflows

Give a Coding Agent Tools to Build a Website

Give a coding agent a practical path from a scoped website brief to reviewed assets, working interactions, and an inspectable deployment preview.

Comparisons

Composio vs Arcade vs o11: AI Agent Tool Platforms

Compare tool execution and account authorization across o11, Composio, and Arcade, with a practical lifecycle pilot for agent developers.

Setup and costs

The Hidden Cost of Setting Up APIs for Agents

Measure the hidden setup cost of another agent API, from accounts and credentials to error handling, maintenance, and a verified useful result.

Research

An Evaluation Framework for Agent-Ready APIs

Evaluate an API operation for agent use with evidence levels, task fixtures, semantic usability, useful results, and recoverable execution.

Tool platforms

How AI Agents Access Paid APIs

How shared tool access reduces separate provider setup, when customer accounts remain necessary, and how to evaluate paid API readiness.

Developer guides

Connect a Custom Agent to Paid Services

Build a small server-side HTTP adapter for custom agents with o11 discovery, explicit execution intents, validated results, and recovery.

Workflows

Build a Lead Research Agent with a Focused Tool Set

Build a lead research agent with observable fit rules, company evidence, selective enrichment, deduplication, and a human-reviewable shortlist.

Comparisons

o11 vs Anyway: Paid API Access for Agents

Compare o11 and Anyway Agents for paid API access, setup time, service coverage, purchase limits, and useful agent outputs.

Setup and costs

Pay-per-Use API Break-Even: A Worked Example

Calculate when pay-per-use tools cost less than an API subscription using usage scenarios, allowances, overages, setup work, and accepted outputs.

Research

Measure Time to First Successful Agent Tool Call

Measure agent tool setup fairly with clean and configured conditions, event timelines, intervention logs, completion rates, and accepted outputs.

Tool platforms

One API Key for Multiple AI Tools

Connect multiple AI tools with one scoped key while keeping supplier credentials, account access, spending authority, and recovery distinct.

Developer guides

MCP Gateway: Connect Many Services Through One Endpoint

Connect an MCP agent to multiple services through one endpoint while preserving provider contracts, account scope, and invocation state.

Workflows

Text to Speech API: Turn Agent Research into Audio

Turn checked research into a written brief and audio summary with versioned evidence, a spoken script, pronunciation review, and reliable delivery.

Comparisons

Composio vs Pipedream Connect vs Nango for AI Agents

Choose agent integrations by authorization, prebuilt actions, custom functions, synchronization, and the maintenance your product needs to own.

Setup and costs

Manage Provider Credentials for AI Agents

Manage provider credentials across agent projects with clear ownership, scoped connections, safe rotation, revocation, and preserved spending history.

Research

Compare Research Workflow Costs Across Tool Stacks

Compare research stacks by accepted briefs, complete consumption ledgers, setup and correction effort, commitments, and matched quality review.

Tool platforms

Model Routers and Tool Routers in an Agent Stack

Design an agent stack with separate model and tool access, explicit execution responsibility, source evidence, and complete workflow costs.

Developer guides

Vercel AI SDK Tools: Connect Agents to Paid APIs

Connect AI SDK 6 agents to o11 through server tool functions with scoped discovery, durable execution intents, and asynchronous recovery.

Workflows

Image and Video Generation APIs in One Agent Workflow

Create product images and short videos with an asset specification, reviewed references, bounded revisions, durable jobs, and truthful product details.

Comparisons

MCP vs Unified Tool APIs vs Direct Integrations

Understand how MCP, unified tool APIs, and direct provider integrations fit together, and assign setup, access, execution, and recovery ownership.

Setup and costs

Estimate Costs for a Multi-Tool Agent Workflow

Estimate multi-tool agent costs from task graphs, billing units, conditional calls, retries, fixed commitments, and the cost per accepted result.

Research

Test Whether Agents Can Use Tools from Their Schemas

Test whether agents can use unfamiliar tools with controlled contracts, semantic fixtures, separate stage scores, and auditable traces.

Tool platforms

Agent Tool Discovery: Find and Choose the Right Tool

A staged method for agent tool discovery: define the result, filter eligible operations, inspect contracts, and evaluate useful outcomes.

Developer guides

LangGraph Tools: Use Paid APIs in a LangGraph Agent

Connect LangGraph workflows to o11 with separate submission and status nodes, stable request intents, checkpoint planning, and recovery.

Workflows

Extract Structured Data from PDFs with an Agent

Build a PDF extraction agent with page-linked evidence, explicit units, structural validation, arithmetic checks, and a reviewable exception queue.

Comparisons

Pay-per-Use Tools vs Subscriptions vs Your Accounts

Compare pay-per-use tools, subscriptions, and provider accounts using setup effort, commitments, accepted outputs, and explicitly illustrative economics.

Setup and costs

Avoid Unused API Subscriptions in Agent Projects

Avoid idle API subscriptions with a project inventory, commercial stop rules, usage review, renewal decisions, and a safe account retirement path.

Research

MCP Token Usage: Measure Tool Definition Cost

A reproducible method and Bun script to count MCP tool definition and result tokens, compare tool search on and off, and estimate cost per 1,000 turns.

Tool platforms

Connected Accounts and Pay-per-Use Agent Tools

Combine connected provider accounts and pay-per-use tools with explicit ownership, account selection, billing context, and recovery rules.

Developer guides

Build a Reusable Agent Tool Layer

Share agent tool access across projects using domain contracts, reusable transport, separate policies, provenance, and explicit recovery.

Workflows

Build a Competitor Monitoring Agent

Monitor selected competitor pages, preserve comparable snapshots, classify meaningful changes, and prepare a weekly brief with clear coverage limits.

Comparisons

Exa vs Tavily vs Brave Search API for AI Agents

Compare Exa, Tavily, and Brave Search by evidence quality, freshness, content retrieval, and cost per accepted research answer.

Setup and costs

Reduce Agent Tool Setup Time

Design faster agent-tool onboarding from targeted discovery through account choice and authorization to a verified useful result and safe recovery.

Tool platforms

How to Choose an AI Tool Platform

Evaluate an AI tool platform using a real workflow, setup tasks, usable output, account boundaries, failure recovery, and complete costs.

Developer guides

Migrate Agent Integrations to a Shared Tool Layer

Migrate agent integrations incrementally with a mapping worksheet, equivalent output checks, preserved account ownership, and rollback.

Workflows

Build a Content Agent with Research and Media Tools

Build a content agent workflow that connects research, useful visuals, and voice tools through an approved story and a versioned asset manifest.

Comparisons

Firecrawl vs Browserbase vs Direct Fetch

Choose direct HTTP retrieval, Firecrawl, or Browserbase by the content, rendering, interaction, and provenance your agent actually needs.

Setup and costs

Recover from Agent Tool Failures

Recover agent tool failures by classifying errors, checking existing calls, bounding retries, preserving partial results, and reconciling uncertainty.

Tool platforms

Smithery Shutdown: Migrate MCP Connections by Oct 31

What stops on October 31, 2026, commands to find run.tools and server.smithery.ai URLs in Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code and Codex, and three replacements.

Developer guides

HTTP 402 Payment Required: How AI Agents Handle It

Recognize x402, MPP, and pay per crawl 402s, decide whether to pay, cap, skip, or fall back, and log a receipt for every paid request.

Workflows

Build an AI Research Agent That Checks Its Sources

Build a research assistant that verifies individual claims, checks source scope and dates, reconciles numbers, and preserves uncertainty honestly.

Comparisons

Replicate vs fal.ai vs Direct Image Generation APIs

Compare Replicate, fal, and direct image APIs by exact model support, accepted-image quality, job handling, artifact ownership, and setup burden.

Setup and costs

Set Spending Limits for Agent Tools

Set agent spending limits with task allowances, card budgets, atomic reservations, verified settlement, and recoverable approval or uncertainty paths.

Developer guides

MCP Tool Pricing: See the Cost Before an Agent Calls

MCP has no standard price field. See the conventions in use, an illustrative _meta price block, and three ways to budget before a paid call.

Workflows

Prototype Agent Features with Paid Tools

Prototype one agent feature with a clear hypothesis, representative tasks, pay-per-use tools, explicit limits, and an evidence-backed product decision.

Comparisons

ElevenLabs vs Cartesia vs OpenAI TTS API for Agents

Compare voice generation for agents using the right speech API, listening rubric, playback measurements, and accepted audio economics.

Setup and costs

Handle Async Image and Video Jobs in AI Agents

Handle long-running image and video jobs by submitting once, persisting identity, observing completion, validating files, and resuming safely.

Developer guides

Sora API Shutdown: Alternatives for Video Agents

The Sora API shut down September 24, 2026. Map Sora requests to Veo, Gemini Omni Flash, Kling, and Seedance, and make the next switch a config change.

Comparisons

x402 vs MPP vs ACP vs AP2: Agent Payment Protocols

Sort x402, MPP, ACP and AP2 by layer, see which ones a tool-calling agent touches, and compare settlement, fiat support and spending caps.

Setup and costs

Choose the Tools Your Agent Actually Needs

Choose an agent tool set by mapping useful outcomes to capabilities, inspecting contracts, scoping authority, and evaluating representative tasks.

Developer guides

Web Bot Auth and Signed Agents: RFC 9421 Guide

Sign agent requests for Web Bot Auth in TypeScript with WebCrypto Ed25519, host a signed key directory, and know which header format Cloudflare verifies.

Comparisons

Web Search API vs Built-in LLM Web Search for Agents

Compare Anthropic, OpenAI, and Gemini web search tools with Exa, Tavily, and Parallel on documented pricing and behavior, plus a reproducible evaluation method.