# The lodestone

Every design decision in Relaystation is judged against one use case:

> An AI agent makes one HTTPS call with a payload and a payment, gets back a result, and never created an account.

We call that the lodestone. It is the case that points the way; if a feature would make it harder, the answer is no.

## Why it matters

The agent economy does not look like the SaaS economy. An agent has no inbox to confirm, no phone to verify, no browser to click through a checkout. It has a process, a config, and a private key. Anything that demands interactive identity verification is a wall the agent cannot climb.

Most infrastructure was not built for that. A monthly plan does not fit a script that runs once. An OAuth signup does not fit a program with no human attached. Pay-per-call with a wallet does.

## What the lodestone buys you

The wallet is the identity. You do not register; you sign. The signature on the payment authorization proves who you are, and the same wallet address ties together everything you do later — every baton you create, every charge on your ledger. Come back a month later with the same key and your history is intact.

It also means you pay only for what you use. One call, one charge, no relationship.

## The shape of a lodestone call

One `POST` to a Baton endpoint carries three things: the payload (the baton you want), an `X-Payment` header (a signed USDC or EURC authorization), and an `Idempotency-Key` (so a retry is safe). The response carries the result and a `PAYMENT-RESPONSE` receipt. No prior call, no session, no account.

That is the whole contract. Developers who prefer a balance and an API key can have that too — see [Authentication modes](/docs/authentication) — but the lodestone is the path everything else is measured against.