Most plugin ideas die in a notes app. ForgeMesh's Pay-per-Crawl got built the same night a stranger on TikTok suggested it, and a second commenter's use case made it into the plugin shortly after.
The pitch is easy to explain at a dinner party: a WordPress plugin that lets non-technical site owners see every bot visiting their site and put a price on the door, paid in USDC through the x402 protocol.
The catch, which the founder is refreshingly upfront about, is that the big AI labs' crawlers aren't paying yet. For now it works as a bot ledger with the price posted, and the ledger on the demo site spotted a fake Googlebot before it ever saw a real one.
The money side is even stranger.
The plugin takes no cut, so the first revenue came from the founder's own x402 endpoints at $0.01 to $0.75 a call, and the first ten customers were AI agents whose identities the founder only worked out from their wallet addresses. We asked about the build, the bills, the stack and the experiment that hit a wall, and here's what they said.
What made you build Pay-per-Crawl, and who is it for?
@0rios01 on TikTok contacted me and said, "Very interested in the x402 work you've done. You should make this into a WordPress plugin. Provide analytics to site owners/revenue share. Just curious, does the paywall negatively affect traffic flow?" I answered them and then thought, "Wait a minute! If this isn't a thing yet, why can't I build it?!" Immediately inspired, I pushed it out that night. I made a TikTok announcing it, and another user commented a use case we'd missed, so I spun that up and pushed it out too.
It's basically for non-technical site owners who want to see every bot that reads their site and put a price on the door. x402-capable agents are already paying; the big AI labs' crawlers aren't yet, and they simply get no content from a charging site. Until that changes it's a bot ledger with the price posted, and when agents with wallets show up, sites are ready for action. Who knows, it could be lucrative for owners in the future when all agents have wallets.
How does it work in practice for a site owner who wants AI crawlers to pay?
In your wp-admin area go to Plugins > Add plugin > search for ForgeMesh > click "Install Now" on the ForgeMesh Pay-per-Crawl plugin > click back to your plugins > Activate > Settings > add your Base USDC crypto public address and how much to charge for your endpoints > then configure the rest to your liking > Save. The Pro plan gives you more control and flexibility in your pricing, so different sections or specific bots can have a different price on them. When you're happy, click Pay-per-Crawl on the side and you'll see your bot data, along with how much your endpoints have made. You can also watch your wallet on Basescan as the source of truth.
What has the response been like since your Show HN launch?
Mostly developers and discovery indexers reaching out, plus a lot of bots: the plugin's own ledger on the demo site saw a fake Googlebot before it saw a real one.
What did you charge first, and where did the first revenue come from?
The plugin takes no cut, so it has never been the revenue line. First revenue was from my own x402 endpoints, priced between $0.01 and $0.75 a call, paid by agents.
Which channel brought your first ten customers?
x402.coinopai.com. The first ten customers were agents paying those endpoints, not people; I only found out who they were from the wallet addresses.
What did you try that failed?
I tried getting into the identity issue and making an NFT to prove identity. I asked Kimi what it wanted out of anything, then put all the agents I had into one Discord, shared Kimi's vision and let them hack away at it. All I did was buy the domains and create any accounts, and they did the rest. We ended up hitting a roadblock at the NFT part because I couldn't figure out a secure way to keep the secrets to create them.
Which tools do you pay for, and which did you cut?
AWS (although I have some founder credits left, so once they come in it will be free for a few months), Cloudflare started charging me a few cents for storage, but I think I cleaned that up, Coinbase because we went over the facilitator free limit with testing through the burner wallets, Anthropic, OpenAI, Kimi, Gemini, domain hosting, grant listing, X, HeyGen, Apify, Twilio, Retell AI, electricity, internet... that's all I can think of but I'm sure there's more. I cut Shopify.
What would you do differently in the first 90 days?
Make myself sit down and learn the basics without distraction for a solid week.
Which founders inspire you, and why?
Maybe Tim Carambat, but I stopped following him when AI started hitting. He seemed really down to earth.
