Agent Times — Live Context Layer for AI Agents

TL;DR

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Response is JSON. /ask auto-detects intent: news queries return articles with title, url, summary, sentiment, entities; $TICKER queries search by entity; weather queries return forecasts; crypto queries return prices. Check the source field. No API key needed.

Common Tasks — Copy-Paste Commands

Ticker search (use $ prefix):
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Weather (any city):
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Crypto prices:
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News search:
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Job search (remote devops/SRE):
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Country-specific news:
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Filter by any tag: Add &tag=TAG to /news. Example tags: jobs, gaming, space, bitcoin, asia, europe, startups, devtools.

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What This Does

Agent Times is a one-stop information API for AI agents. 3,576 RSS feeds across 14 categories, weather forecasts, and crypto prices — all from one /ask endpoint.

• - Semantic search + neural re-ranking — AI understands meaning, then a cross-encoder re-ranks results by true relevance. "Why did NVDA drop" finds "NVIDIA Falls 3% as Investors Weigh GTC Optimism Against Risks"
• FinBERT sentiment — finance articles scored by a financial-domain neural network. Correctly identifies "Rally fades as investors take profits" as bearish. Only runs on business, crypto, energy, ai, tech categories for accuracy.
• Source credibility — tier 1 (Reuters, BBC) get 1.3x ranking boost, tier 3 (unknown) get 0.8x penalty
• GLiNER entity extraction — zero-shot NER detects people, companies, locations, organizations, products, events. Plus ticker/crypto dictionary matching (300+ stocks, 100+ crypto).
• ModernBERT classification — each article classified by a fine-tuned ModernBERT model (93.9% accuracy, 149M params) reading actual text, not just RSS feed label. Tags auto-assigned by topic + country.
• Weather forecasts — global weather via Open-Meteo. Just ask "weather tokyo" or "weather london"
• Crypto prices — real-time prices from Pyth Network oracle (BTC, ETH, SOL, and 10+ more). Just ask "bitcoin price"
• Country tags — filter by 60+ countries and regions
• Webhook subscriptions — get notified when articles matching your topic arrive
• 4-tier fallback — semantic search → keyword search → web search (70+ engines) → query suggestions

228,000+ articles with 30-day retention. 6 AI models (embedder on GPU, classifier on GPU, cross-encoder, FinBERT, GLiNER NER, tag centroids).

When to Use Which Endpoint

You want to...	Use this	Free?
Search for a topic	INLINECODE19	Yes
Check weather

GET /ask?q=weather+tokyo or GET /weather?location=tokyo | Yes | | Get crypto prices | GET /ask?q=bitcoin+price or GET /prices?symbol=BTC | Yes | | Get trending stories | GET /trending | Yes | | Browse a category | GET /news?category=CAT | Yes | | Filter by country/tag | GET /news?category=world&tag=singapore | Yes | | Search the web | GET /search?q=QUERY | $0.001 (x402) | | Monitor a topic | POST /subscribe | Yes | | List categories | GET /news/categories | Yes |

Rule of thumb: Start with /ask. It's free, smart, and auto-detects if you're asking about news, weather, or crypto prices. Use /news only when you need bulk category browsing with filters.

/ask — Smart Search (FREE)

Searches all 228K+ articles using AI semantic matching + keyword matching + web search fallback. Returns results ranked by relevance and recency.

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Param	Default	Description
q	required	Search query. Replace spaces with INLINECODE32
limit

10 | Max results (1-50) |

Response:
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When /ask finds fewer than 3 results, it automatically falls back to web search. When 0 results, it returns suggestions with related categories and terms.

/trending — Trending Stories (FREE)

Detects stories being covered by multiple independent sources.

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Param	Default	Description
hours	6	Lookback window (1-48)
min_sources

3 | Minimum sources covering the same story |
| limit | 20 | Max trending clusters |

/subscribe — Topic Alerts (FREE)

Get webhook notifications when new articles matching your query arrive.

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Response: INLINECODE35

Unsubscribe (requires the secret from subscribe response):
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Your webhook receives a POST with matching articles every time new ones arrive (checked every 5 minutes).

Security: Webhook must be a public HTTPS URL. Localhost, private IPs, and cloud metadata endpoints are blocked.

/news — Category Browsing (FREE)

Browse and filter articles by category with optional tag, date range, and keyword filters.

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Param	Default	Description
category	required	One of 14 categories, or INLINECODE36
tag

— | Subcategory/country filter (see table below) |
| limit | 20 | Max results (1-1000) |
| q | — | Keyword filter within category |
| since | — | ISO date — articles after this time |
| before | — | ISO date — articles before this time |
| dedup | true | Deduplicate similar headlines |

/search — Web Search ($0.001)

Search the open web via 70+ engines when you need non-news results.

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Param	Default	Description
q	required	Search query
limit

5 | Max results (1-50) |
| category | general | general, news, images, videos, science, files |

Categories + Tags

14 categories. Use &tag= on /news to filter by subcategory, country, or region.

Category	What's in it	Available tags
world	International news, geopolitics, diplomacy	INLINECODE39, europe, middleeast, africa, india, latam, oceania, defense, government + 50 country tags (see below)
politics

Elections, policy, legislation, regulation | — |
| business | Finance, commerce, employment, markets | finance, startups, jobs, marketing, ecommerce, fintech, realestate, legal, supplychain |
| tech | Software, hardware, engineering, data | devtools, engineering, mobile, datascience, telecom |
| ai | Artificial intelligence, machine learning | robotics, research |
| crypto | Cryptocurrency, blockchain, DeFi | web3, defi, bitcoin, markets |
| science | Research, discoveries, academia | biotech, space, research |
| health | Medicine, wellness, public health | fitness |
| energy | Energy, climate change, environment | climate, environment, agriculture |
| security | Cybersecurity, infosec, threats | — |
| sports | All sports coverage | — |
| entertainment | Film, music, gaming, TV, culture | gaming, film, music |
| lifestyle | Food, travel, fashion, daily life | food, travel, fashion, design, education |
| automotive | Vehicles, EVs, transportation, logistics | shipping |

Country Tags (use with category=world&tag=COUNTRY)

Asia: singapore, malaysia, philippines, indonesia, thailand, vietnam, japan, korea, china, taiwan, hongkong, india, pakistan, INLINECODE98

Europe: uk, germany, france, italy, spain, netherlands, sweden, norway, denmark, finland, ireland, poland, austria, switzerland, iceland, romania, hungary, greece, serbia, ukraine, INLINECODE119

Middle East: israel, turkey, iran, saudiarabia, uae, INLINECODE125

Africa: nigeria, southafrica, kenya, ghana, INLINECODE130

Latin America: brazil, mexico, argentina, colombia, chile, INLINECODE136

Oceania: australia, INLINECODE138

North America: usa, INLINECODE140

Response Format

News results (/ask, /news, /trending) return:
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Weather (/ask?q=weather+tokyo) returns: INLINECODE145

Crypto prices (/ask?q=bitcoin+price) returns: INLINECODE147

Check the source field to determine response shape: news_db, combined, open-meteo, nea, or pyth.

Each article result contains:

• - title — headline
• INLINECODE155 — link to original article
• INLINECODE156 — first 200 chars of content
• INLINECODE157 — one of 14 categories
• INLINECODE158 — RSS feed URL
• INLINECODE159 — publication date
• INLINECODE160 — Unix timestamp (ms)
• INLINECODE161 — "bullish", "bearish", or "neutral"
• INLINECODE162 — -1.0 (very bearish) to 1.0 (very bullish)
• INLINECODE163 — "high" (tier 1 outlets), "medium" (established), or "unknown"
• INLINECODE164 — {people, companies, tickers, crypto, locations} extracted by GLiNER + dictionary matching
• INLINECODE166 — subcategory and country tags for this article

Errors: INLINECODE167

Payment (x402)

The /search endpoint uses the x402 protocol. Your agent pays $0.001 USDC per request on Base network — no accounts, no subscriptions, just micropayments. All other endpoints are free.

Wallet: 0x536Eafe011786599d9a656D62e2aeAFcE06a96D1 (Base)

Other Free Endpoints

Endpoint	Description
INLINECODE170	List all 14 categories with counts
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Database statistics | | GET /feeds/health?category=CAT | Per-feed health and status | | GET /health | Health check | | GET /info | Full API docs (JSON for agents, HTML for browsers) |

Tips for Best Results

1. 1. Always start with /ask — it's free, semantic, and handles fallback automatically
2. Country news: Use /ask?q=japan+earthquake not /news?category=japan (no country categories)
3. Filter by country: Use /news?category=world&tag=singapore for source-based filtering
4. Sentiment analysis: Check sentiment_score to gauge market/public mood on a topic
5. Entity detection: Use entities.tickers and entities.crypto to find articles mentioning specific assets
6. Monitor breaking news: POST to /subscribe with a webhook URL to get real-time alerts
7. Parse JSON directly — don't pipe to jq (may not be installed)
8. Replace spaces with + in all query strings
9. Check suggestions when 0 results — it recommends related categories and search terms
10. Credibility matters: Sort by credibility to prioritize tier 1 sources (Reuters, BBC, AP) over unknown blogs