Concepts

Agent gateway

An agent gateway is a reverse proxy that a human or AI agent can access via a URL to send API requests and pay for those requests, and to access an MCP server to use the API more effectively. The agent gateway is built to be used by AI agents and provides a suite of tools that let your API be used by AI agents.

Model Context Protocol (MCP) server

A server that defines the behavior of an AI agent's interactions with an API, allowing the agent to use the API deterministically when designed properly. A well-made MCP server increases the accuracy of an AI agent's use of an API, resulting in less searching of the web and less token usage to get the desired result.

Recipe

One task, published as a single MCP tool. A Recipe holds typed inputs, a fixed prompt, a model, and the tools it is allowed to call. An agent sends the inputs and gets the finished result, so a job that would take several API calls and several prices becomes one call and one price. Anyone can browse the published catalog at bazantic.com/recipes or read it as JSON from https://api.bazantic.com/v1/recipes. See Recipes.

Ingredient

One approved MCP tool that a Recipe may call, reached through a gateway. Every Ingredient belongs to a service already on Bazantic, which is what keeps a Recipe honest: it cannot invent a tool, and it cannot call anything outside its bindings. A Recipe binds 1 to 64 of them. If a task needs something no Ingredient covers, the missing API has to be registered as a gateway first.

Custom handle and custom domain

Two ways to replace a gateway's default address with a name of your own. A custom handle is a subdomain of bazgateway.com, such as acme.bazgateway.com. A custom domain is a subdomain of a domain you own, such as api.acme.com. Bazantic verifies that you control the domain, issues a TLS certificate for it, and then advertises the hostname everywhere it names your gateway. See Custom domains.

x402

An open, chain-agnostic payment protocol built on the HTTP 402 Payment Required status code: a server challenges a request with the price and payment details, the client settles the payment, then replays the request with proof of payment attached. Bazantic gateways advertise x402 alongside MPP so a paying agent can use whichever it supports. A Bazantic gateway settles x402 payments on Base and on Solana. See the x402 Foundation's documentation for the full specification.

Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)

An HTTP Payment authentication scheme for machine-to-machine payments, developed by Tempo (backed by Stripe) and settled on the Tempo chain. It works alongside x402 in the same 402 challenge, carried in WWW-Authenticate: Payment headers. See Tempo's MPP documentation and the MPP specifications for details.