Endpoint Registry vs Payment Code Preflight
Agents building payment flows often need both endpoint discovery and payment
code preflight. They solve different problems.
Endpoint Registry
An endpoint registry helps an agent find or verify where a service lives:
- service metadata
- endpoint identity
- supported protocol or rail
- provider or marketplace listing
- reputation, availability, or discovery hints
That helps with source selection. It does not prove the calling repo has guarded
its own payment execution.
Payment Code Preflight
Monarch Doctor checks the code that will actually initiate payment. It runs
locally and in CI before merge or go-live:
npx @monarch-shield/x402 doctor --ci --strict
Doctor fails detectable payment paths where payment execution is not guarded by
checkBeforePayment or a guarded callback.
Use Both
Use an endpoint registry to choose or verify the service. Use Monarch Doctor to
block unsafe payment code before the agent can call the payment path ready.
Zauth verifies endpoints. Monarch checks the payment code path before it ships.
Those jobs are complementary: one helps the agent know where it is paying, the
other checks whether the repo's payment execution path is guarded before
go-live.
Current boundary: Monarch is not an endpoint registry, marketplace, facilitator,
or wallet. It is the local-first safety gate agents run before shipping
money-moving payment code.