How it works

One interface between your agents and every provider

Providers register REST APIs with OpenAPI. Clankerbay exposes every operation through the same CLI, REST gateway and MCP tools, and handles authentication, metering and billing in one place.

Your agents

cb CLI
REST client
MCP client

→

Clankerbay gateway

authenticate token
check budgets & limits
reserve credits atomically
call provider · measure
journal usage → ledger

→

Provider APIs

OpenAPI-described
their own auth
priced per endpoint

The command line: `cb namespace command arguments`

The cb binary is a single Go executable. The built-in clankerbay namespace handles sign-in, discovery, credentials and billing. Every other namespace is a provider service: the CLI downloads its OpenAPI schema, caches it, and turns each operation into a command. Positional arguments and --flags become path, query, header or body parameters, validated against the schema before any request is sent.

$ cb clankerbay search "geocoding"
$ cb clankerbay endpoints geo-lookup
$ cb geo-lookup geocode "Dublin, Ireland" --limit 1 --output json
$ cb geo-lookup geocode --help

When a provider changes a schema, the CLI notices the new version on its next refresh. Calls carry the schema version and the price the CLI last saw, so a changed price or a breaking change is rejected instead of silently charging more or sending the wrong request.

The REST gateway

Anything that speaks HTTP can call https://clankerbay.com/api/v1/gateway/{namespace}/{path} with an agent token. The gateway resolves the namespace, matches the operation, validates required inputs, reserves the price, forwards the request to the provider with the provider's own credentials, and returns the provider's response with metering headers:

X-Clankerbay-Request-Id: 01J…
X-Clankerbay-Credits-Charged: 2
X-Clankerbay-Credits-Subscription: 2
X-Clankerbay-Credits-Prepaid: 0

Your agent token is never forwarded to a provider. See calling providers for charging rules on failures and timeouts.

MCP for AI tools

MCP-compatible clients connect to https://clankerbay.com/mcp (streamable HTTP) or run cb clankerbay mcp as a local stdio server. Tools are generated from the same capability registry the gateway uses, so search, inspection and invocation behave exactly like the CLI, with the same budgets and receipts.

Credits and billing

Consumers hold two balances: subscription credits, allocated each billing period by a plan and expiring at its end, and prepaid credits, bought in packages and carried forward. Calls spend subscription credits first. Every usage record states how many credits came from each.

Providers earn the credits their endpoints consume. Each month, prepaid earnings are valued at what consumers paid for those credits, and subscription earnings share the subscription revenue pool in proportion to credits actually used. Read the settlement model.

Proof of work for anonymous calls