Demo · live against this site
A challenge, not a wall.
A live HTTP 402 exchange against this site. An unidentified request is answered with a description of what would satisfy it; an identified one gets the resource and an Ed25519-signed receipt.
What just happened
Ask first. Then serve.
The first request carried no identity, so the server answered with status 402 and a JSON body describing what it would accept. That is the whole idea of the lane: an undeclared agent is asked a question instead of being turned away, and the customer standing behind it is still served.
The second request presented a token. The demo token stands in for whatever a business decides satisfies it — a signed agent identity, a mandate from the principal, or a settlement method. The server released the resource and issued a receipt signed with Ed25519; the kid in the receipt names the key at /.well-known/aethelforge/keys, so any third party can verify it without a shared secret.
# 1 — the challenge curl -i https://aethelforge.ai/api/receipts/sample # 2 — identify curl -i -H "Authorization: Bearer x402-demo-token" \ https://aethelforge.ai/api/receipts/sample
The receipt can also be verified through the MCP server: call tools/call with verify_receipt and the receipt JSON as the argument.