Namecheck API

curl -X POST https://namecheck.ounie.com/api/checks \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer nmc_live_…" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "orbitkiln",
    "tlds": ["com", "io", "dev"],
    "trademark": true
  }'

The whole board comes back on the same request — typically in 4–10 seconds, since it runs a dozen live probes and a web search. There is no job to poll.

Three credentials are accepted, in this order:

• Your app key — Authorization: Bearer nmc_live_…, minted at /dashboard/api-keys. Up to 5 active. Only the sha256 hash is stored; the raw token is shown once.
• The fleet master key — your ounie.com developer key (ounie_live_…) works here too, once you enable “Use across Ounie apps” in your ounie.com settings.
• The shared session cookie — the dashboard uses it. Any signed-in .ounie.com browser session works.

Hosts that can't set a header (the Ounie AI Team's manual MCP entries, for one) may pass the key as ?api_key=nmc_live_… on any endpoint.

{
  "ok": true,
  "check": {
    "id": "…",
    "name": "orbitkiln",
    "headline": "orbitkiln: 5 of 6 domains open, 5 of 6 handles open · 3 conflicts found.",
    "domains": [
      { "tld": "com", "domain": "orbitkiln.com", "status": "available",
        "source": "https://rdap.verisign.com/com/v1/", "checkedAt": "…" },
      { "tld": "co",  "domain": "orbitkiln.co",  "status": "unknown",
        "source": "no authoritative RDAP service",
        "reason": "The .co registry publishes no RDAP service to IANA…",
        "checkedAt": "…" }
    ],
    "handles": [
      { "platform": "github", "label": "GitHub", "handle": "orbitkiln",
        "status": "available", "url": "https://github.com/orbitkiln", "checkedAt": "…" }
    ],
    "trademark": {
      "riskBand": "watch",
      "collisions": [
        { "name": "Orbit Kiln Ceramics", "owner": null,
          "url": "https://…", "similarity": "close", "note": "…" }
      ],
      "checked": ["web evidence"],
      "notChecked": ["USPTO register", "EUIPO register"],
      "sourcesSearched": 8,
      "disclaimer": "…"
    },
    "summary": {
      "bestDomains": ["orbitkiln.com", "orbitkiln.io"],
      "conflicts": 3, "domainsAvailable": 5,
      "handlesAvailable": 5, "unresolved": 1
    },
    "thin": false,
    "credits_spent": 5
  }
}

Every status is one of available, taken or unknown. There is no fourth, softer state — if we could not find out, the row says so and carries the reason.

Domain answers come from the registries themselves over RDAP, the successor to WHOIS. The TLD's endpoint is resolved through the IANA bootstrap at data.iana.org/rdap/dns.json, then queried directly. A registry record means taken; no record means available; anything else is unknown.

A 200 is only trusted when the body is an actual RDAP domain object. That guard exists because a wrong base URL will happily 404 everything, or 200 everything, and either one produces a confident wrong answer for an entire TLD.

Six platforms are supported, and the list is exactly the set that was verified to return a different status for a taken handle and a free one. The handle we probe is your name run through that platform's own rules; both the handle and a public URL come back so you can check it yourself.

These are not supported, and asking for one is a 400:

Two brand-shaped searches pull public pages. A model extracts the brands visible in them, and every citation is checked against the pages actually fetched — a URL that was not in that set is dropped, never repaired. The band is then a pure function of what survived, so you can re-derive it from the collisions in the response.

A check is thin only when every single probe returned unknown — no registry answered, no platform answered, and the trademark scan read nothing. That taught you nothing, so it refunds in full and credits_spent is 0.

Free forever, on any rail.

GET /api/checks?limit=20&risk_band=watch
GET /api/checks/<id>

Endpoint  https://namecheck.ounie.com/api/mcp   (legacy SSE: /api/sse)
Auth      Authorization: Bearer nmc_live_…
          …or https://namecheck.ounie.com/api/mcp?api_key=nmc_live_…

get_supported_targets is public and exists for a reason: an agent that does not know a platform is unsupported will read the absent row as available.

Agents with no Ounie account pay in USDC on Base. Two gates protect the payer, and the order is deliberate.

• Before quoting. Anything wrong with the request itself — a malformed name, a junk TLD, an unsupported platform — returns a 4xx with no price in the body. You are never asked to sign a payment for work that cannot succeed.
• Before settling. The signature is verified off-chain, the check runs, and only then does the money move. A check where nothing resolved returns 402 thin_result and is never settled — an on-chain settlement is final, so the refusal has to come first.

curl -X POST https://namecheck.ounie.com/api/x402/namecheck \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"orbitkiln"}'
# → 402 { "x402Version": 1, "accepts": [{
#     "scheme": "exact", "network": "base",
#     "maxAmountRequired": "60000",
#     "asset": "0x833589fCD6eDb6E08f4c7C32D4f71b54bdA02913",
#     "payTo": "0x…",
#     "extra": { "name": "USD Coin", "version": "2" } }] }

curl -X POST https://namecheck.ounie.com/api/x402/namecheck \
  -H "X-Payment: <base64 signed payload>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"orbitkiln"}'

$0.060 per check. The exact scheme is an offline EIP-3009 authorization — the facilitator pays the gas, so a wallet holding only USDC can pay.

Credits are shared across every Ounie app and bought at ounie.com/dashboard/settings.