Guides › Selling to AI agents, part 2

What AI agents are looking for, and where nobody serves them yet

Published 31 October 2026. Figures are from our demand data for the 30 days to 24 October 2026.

Part 1 showed how to build a paid API with one prompt. This part is about what to build. The code is the easy part now; what decides whether anyone pays is whether agents need what you sell.

AI agents search our directory every day for services they can pay for with x402. We publish every search, free, so you can see what they ask for before you build anything.

Where to look

• For you: what agents ask for: the terms agents searched, ranked by how often they asked.
• For your AI assistant: the same data as JSON at https://api.nohumans.directory/v1/demand, or through our MCP server (tool what_agents_are_asking_for). Each term comes with the listings our own search already finds for it.

The free version runs a week behind. The live version is paid: $0.25 for the needs grouped by theme (through our API), or $2 for a written report on the demand page.

What the data says right now

Almost everything agents ask for already has a seller. About a thousand different searches were published, and our search found at least one listing for every one of them except a test string. So “nobody sells it” is rare. “Nobody sells it well” is common.

The popular needs are crowded. Weather, stock screens and stock research, crypto funding rates, email and domain checks, wallet sanctions checks, tools that check an x402 payment before paying: each has several sellers. You can still enter, but you compete on being the one that works every time and shows a free sample.

The gaps are in the long tail. Two we checked by hand, each asked on one day:

• adding vowel points (nikud) to Hebrew text;
• repairing the direction of right-to-left text mixed with English.

Our search returns nothing that does either. Demand like this is small, and that is normal for a young market: the first good seller of a niche tool can have it to itself.

How to judge an idea

1. Asked more than once. Several different days is a better sign than many searches on one day.
2. Skip product names. Some top terms are the name of one service, looked up by agents or by its owner. That is not demand you can serve.
3. Read what already exists. Do the listings our search returns do the same thing? Is there a free sample? Have we bought from them and seen them deliver? A need with only unrelated or unproven results is still open.
4. Can you supply it legally, every time? A calculation, a conversion, data you collect yourself or have the right to resell.
5. Price it at $0.002 or more. Past 1,000 sales a month each sale costs $0.001 in payment fees, so a lower price earns nothing in a busy month.

The prompt

Copy this into your AI assistant. It does the research with you, then hands over to the part 1 prompt to build.

Help me choose a paid API to build for AI agents. I am a beginner: explain your reasoning in plain words.

1. Read what AI agents searched for in the nohumans.directory: https://api.nohumans.directory/v1/demand
   Ignore terms that are just the name of one product or service.
2. Shortlist 5 needs that were asked on more than one day and that a small API could serve well.
   My background, in case it helps: [what you know or can get data on, e.g. "I speak Hebrew", "I work in logistics", or leave blank].
3. For each one, check what already exists: https://api.nohumans.directory/v1/discover?q=<the need in plain words>
   Tell me which needs are well served (verified, bought and delivered, a free sample) and which are not.
4. Recommend one I can build legally and run reliably, at $0.002 or more per call, and tell me why.

When I agree, we build it with the prompt from https://nohumans.directory/guides/first-paid-api

Copy the prompt

Be honest with yourself

Searching is not buying, and the numbers are small: this is a young market, and we report it as it is. Treat your first API as learning, look at the demand page again in a month, and build the next one from what changed.

Sources: nohumans.directory demand feed and catalogue search, read 31 October 2026 (window 24 September to 24 October 2026). The two gaps were checked by searching our catalogue for each need in plain words.

Your next step

• No idea yet? See what agents ask for, free.
• Have an idea? Build it with one prompt.
• Already built one? Make sure it delivers, then check it free and list it where agents look for paid services.

Your AI assistant can also search our directory itself, through our MCP server: https://api.nohumans.directory/mcp (in Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport http nohumans https://api.nohumans.directory/mcp).

Selling to AI agents: the series

1. Build your first paid API for AI agents, with one prompt
2. What AI agents are looking for, and where nobody serves them yet (you are here)
3. Why paid APIs fail AI agents, and how to make yours deliver