# What is Roundhouse

The public record of what agents pay each other for, built from x402 settlements and on-chain identities.

Section: Get started
Source: https://www.roundhouse.studio/docs/get-started/what-is-roundhouse

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Roundhouse is the public record of what agents pay each other for. It indexes two open standards:

- **[x402](https://www.roundhouse.studio/docs/x402/overview)** turns HTTP's unused `402 Payment Required` status into a working
  payment handshake. A server quotes a price, a client signs an authorization, a facilitator
  settles it on-chain, and the resource is returned. No account, no API key, no invoice.
- **[ERC-8004](https://www.roundhouse.studio/docs/identity/erc-8004)** gives an agent a portable on-chain identity and a
  reputation record that travels with it, instead of a per-platform reputation it loses the moment
  it moves.

Roundhouse joins them. It watches the chains, verifies which USDC transfers really were x402
settlements, resolves the wallets on both ends to identities where it can, and publishes the whole
thing as a public record you can browse, query, or hand to an agent.

## What it is for

A payment record answers questions nothing else can:

| Question | Where it is answered |
| --- | --- |
| Is this endpoint real, or is the listing aspirational? | [Services](https://www.roundhouse.studio/services) — listed price against observed demand |
| Has anyone actually paid this counterparty? | [`/v0/merchants/<wallet>`](https://www.roundhouse.studio/docs/api) and the [merchant page](https://www.roundhouse.studio/docs/data/surfaces) |
| Who routes payments, and how much flows through each? | [Facilitators](https://www.roundhouse.studio/facilitators) |
| What is a fair price for this kind of call? | [SQL over the index](https://www.roundhouse.studio/docs/data/sql) |
| Which agents are worth trusting? | [Trust and reputation](https://www.roundhouse.studio/docs/identity/trust-and-reputation) |

The short version: **a listing tells you what someone claims to sell; the settlement record tells
you whether anyone is buying it.** Almost everything useful Roundhouse does comes from keeping
those two apart.

## What it indexes

Four things, all from public sources — nobody submits anything to us.

- **Settlements.** USDC payments on supported chains, matched against x402 service wallets and
  verified against the token's own EIP-3009 markers. Read
  [coverage and confidence](https://www.roundhouse.studio/docs/data/coverage-and-confidence) before you treat a number as fact.
- **Agents.** ERC-8004 identities read straight from the on-chain IdentityRegistry, with their
  registration card and payment wallet.
- **Reputation.** Feedback from the ERC-8004 ReputationRegistry, aggregated per agent.
- **Services.** The public x402 service catalog, enriched with a liveness probe, the endpoint's
  serving location, and what the index has actually observed being paid.

Indexing is permissionless in both directions: you do not ask to be included, and you cannot ask
to be removed from a public ledger. What you *can* do is
[make yourself legible](https://www.roundhouse.studio/docs/guides/get-listed-as-a-merchant) — a name, a card, a live endpoint.

## Next steps

- Want your agent transacting today → [Set up an agent](https://www.roundhouse.studio/docs/guides/set-up-an-agent)
- Want to understand the protocol first → [x402 overview](https://www.roundhouse.studio/docs/x402/overview)
- Want the data → [Query the index](https://www.roundhouse.studio/docs/get-started/query-the-index)
- You *are* an agent → [`/docs.md`](https://www.roundhouse.studio/docs.md), then [`/skill.md`](https://www.roundhouse.studio/skill.md)

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Every page in these docs is available as markdown at its own URL plus `.md`.
Full index: https://www.roundhouse.studio/docs.md