# Flare

> Flare is an AEO console. It measures how AI assistants actually talk about a company,
> benchmarks the competitors who are beating it, works out why they win, and drafts the
> content that closes the gap. Answer engines are the new front page; Flare tells you what
> yours says about you.

Flare is agent-first on purpose. Everything the web app can do, an API key can do: create a
workflow, run the pipeline, read the gap analysis, draft the content, pay for the credit it
just spent. There is no human-only surface and no separate "agent" tier — a key inherits its
owner's role, balance and rate limits, because the key *is* the identity.

## What it measures

Every prompt is asked to a panel of 8 assistants (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Z.ai, NVIDIA, Moonshot, DeepSeek, Perplexity), each answer is
judged for brand mentions, position and sentiment, and the result is an AEO score from 0 to 100
alongside a classic-search baseline for comparison. Then it benchmarks your rivals on the same
prompts, probes both of you for the signals that drive AI visibility, and explains the delta.

## Interfaces

- [https://app.somuchflare.com/api/openapi.json](https://app.somuchflare.com/api/openapi.json): OpenAPI 3.1 for the whole REST surface. Start here.
- [https://app.somuchflare.com/mcp](https://app.somuchflare.com/mcp): MCP over streamable HTTP. POST JSON-RPC with `Authorization: Bearer flare_sk_…` and `Accept: application/json, text/event-stream`.
- [https://app.somuchflare.com/.well-known/x402](https://app.somuchflare.com/.well-known/x402): what this instance accepts as payment, in x402 v2.
- [Agent onboarding](https://github.com/kpeluso/flare/blob/main/docs/agents.md): keys, curl, MCP config, the x402 handshake, end to end.
- [Agent skill file](https://github.com/kpeluso/flare/blob/main/docs/flare-agent-skill.md): drop-in instructions so an agent can drive Flare unassisted.

## MCP tools

`list_workflows`, `get_workflow`, `create_workflow`, `run_step`, `queue_steps`, `get_run`,
`get_scores`, `get_gaps`, `get_recommendations`, `export_report`, `get_balance`,
`suggest_pricing`. Admin keys see a little more. Tools you are not entitled to are not listed
at all, so what you can see is what you can do.

## Authentication

Mint a key in Settings, or `POST https://app.somuchflare.com/api/auth/keys`. Send it as
`Authorization: Bearer flare_sk_…` on every request. The secret is shown once and stored only
as a SHA-256 digest, so if you lose it, mint another. Humans sign in with a magic link instead;
there are no passwords to phish.

## What it costs

Credits are 1:1 with dollars. The markup (10.0%) is charged once when you buy credit and
never again when you spend it, so the numbers below are what you actually pay.

- Entry fee: $5.00 — one-time, and every cent of it lands in your balance.
- Cheapest step (Company profile): $0.05
- Priciest step (Competitor benchmark): $2.12
- A full pipeline, every step once: $4.01
- One drafted piece of content: $0.12
- $5.00 funds about 1 full pipeline.
- $20.00 funds about 4 full pipelines.
- $100.00 funds about 24 full pipelines.

Running a step reserves its upper estimate against your balance before it starts, then charges
what it really cost when it finishes — capped at what was reserved. Failed runs are charged
too: the provider billed us for them either way.

## Paying, without a human

Out of credit, Flare answers **402** with an x402 v2 payment-requirements document, on
`POST /api/billing/purchase` and on any metered call. Pay it, retry with a
`PAYMENT-SIGNATURE` header, and the receipt comes back in `PAYMENT-RESPONSE`. The demand is in
the header, base64-encoded, with the same JSON in the body for anyone reading with curl.
Amounts are in the asset's base units — USDC has six decimals, so an amount is micro-USD.

Settlement on this instance runs through a stub: a well-formed payment always succeeds, and the credit it mints is recorded as mock, never as revenue.

## Limits

- 240 requests/minute anonymous, 600 signed in, 3000 for admins, with burst headroom on top.
- A key shares its owner's allowance. Minting more keys does not buy more rate limit.
- 5 concurrent event streams per principal. If you want more, poll `GET /api/workflows/{id}/events?afterId=…` instead.
- 429 responses carry `Retry-After`. Honour it.

## Notes

- Money crosses the API as integer micro-USD (1 USD = 1,000,000) on every field ending in `Micro`.
- Runs are asynchronous: invoking a step returns 202 and the work continues server-side. Follow it over SSE, or poll the events endpoint.
- Reading another tenant's resource returns 404, not 403. Nothing confirms that an id you cannot see exists.
- Source and issues: [https://github.com/kpeluso/flare](https://github.com/kpeluso/flare).