Agenttimes

Live context layer for AI agents. One /ask endpoint for news, weather, crypto prices, and alerts. 228K+ articles, 3,576 feeds, 14 categories. Enriched with s...

Security Scan

This instruction-only skill is internally consistent with its stated purpose (calling a public news/weather/crypto API via curl) and does not request unrelated system access or credentials.

Purpose & Capability

The name/description promise (news, weather, crypto via a single /ask endpoint) matches the SKILL.md: all examples are simple curl GETs to agenttimes.live. Required binary is only curl and there are no unrelated env vars or config paths.

Instruction Scope

Runtime instructions only show invoking public endpoints (GET /ask, /trending, /prices, etc.) via curl. The instructions do not ask the agent to read local files, environment variables, or system state, nor to transmit data to unexpected endpoints. A webhook subscribe feature is mentioned (POST /subscribe), which is expected for alerts but requires the user to provide/host a callback URL—SKILL.md does not instruct the agent to expose local system endpoints.

Install Mechanism

No install spec or bundled code is provided; this is instruction-only, so nothing is written to disk and no third-party packages are pulled in.

Credentials

The skill declares no required environment variables or credentials. Its functionality (calling a public API) does not appear to need secrets or privileged environment access.

Persistence & Privilege

always is false and the skill does not request persistent/system-wide changes. It does not modify other skills or system config; autonomous invocation is the platform default but not elevated here.

Assessment

This skill simply calls a third‑party API (https://agenttimes.live) using curl. Before enabling it, confirm you trust that domain because any queries (and potentially contextual text the agent sends) go to that service. Avoid sending secrets or sensitive PII in queries, be cautious with the webhook/subscribe feature (it requires you to host or expose a callback URL), and consider requiring explicit user approval before the agent invokes external-network skills autonomously. If you need higher assurance, review the provider's privacy/documentation or prefer a self-hosted data source.

Agent Times — Live Context Layer for AI Agents

TL;DR

# News search:
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=why+is+NVDA+down+today"

# Weather:
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=weather+tokyo"

# Crypto price:
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=bitcoin+price"

# Trending stories:
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/trending"

Response is JSON. /ask auto-detects intent: news queries return articles with title, url, summary, sentiment, entities; $TICKER queries search by entity; weather queries return forecasts; crypto queries return prices. Check the source field. No API key needed.

Common Tasks — Copy-Paste Commands

Ticker search (use $ prefix):

curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=%24NVDA"
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=%24SPY"
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=%24AAPL"

Weather (any city):

curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=weather+tokyo"
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=weather+london"

Crypto prices:

curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=bitcoin+price"
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/prices?symbol=ETH,SOL,BTC"

News search:

curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=why+did+NVDA+drop+today"

Job search (remote devops/SRE):

curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/news?category=business&tag=jobs&limit=20"

Country-specific news:

curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=singapore+news"

Filter by any tag: Add &tag=TAG to /news. Example tags: jobs, gaming, space, bitcoin, asia, europe, startups, devtools.

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What This Does

Agent Times is a one-stop information API for AI agents. 3,576 RSS feeds across 14 categories, weather forecasts, and crypto prices — all from one /ask endpoint.

• Semantic search + neural re-ranking — AI understands meaning, then a cross-encoder re-ranks results by true relevance. "Why did NVDA drop" finds "NVIDIA Falls 3% as Investors Weigh GTC Optimism Against Risks"
• FinBERT sentiment — finance articles scored by a financial-domain neural network. Correctly identifies "Rally fades as investors take profits" as bearish. Only runs on business, crypto, energy, ai, tech categories for accuracy.
• Source credibility — tier 1 (Reuters, BBC) get 1.3x ranking boost, tier 3 (unknown) get 0.8x penalty
• GLiNER entity extraction — zero-shot NER detects people, companies, locations, organizations, products, events. Plus ticker/crypto dictionary matching (300+ stocks, 100+ crypto).
• ModernBERT classification — each article classified by a fine-tuned ModernBERT model (93.9% accuracy, 149M params) reading actual text, not just RSS feed label. Tags auto-assigned by topic + country.
• Weather forecasts — global weather via Open-Meteo. Just ask "weather tokyo" or "weather london"
• Crypto prices — real-time prices from Pyth Network oracle (BTC, ETH, SOL, and 10+ more). Just ask "bitcoin price"
• Country tags — filter by 60+ countries and regions
• Webhook subscriptions — get notified when articles matching your topic arrive
• 4-tier fallback — semantic search → keyword search → web search (70+ engines) → query suggestions

228,000+ articles with 30-day retention. 6 AI models (embedder on GPU, classifier on GPU, cross-encoder, FinBERT, GLiNER NER, tag centroids).

When to Use Which Endpoint

You want to...	Use this	Free?
Search for a topic	GET /ask?q=TOPIC	Yes
Check weather	GET /ask?q=weather+tokyo or GET /weather?location=tokyo	Yes
Get crypto prices	GET /ask?q=bitcoin+price or GET /prices?symbol=BTC	Yes
Get trending stories	GET /trending	Yes
Browse a category	GET /news?category=CAT	Yes
Filter by country/tag	GET /news?category=world&tag=singapore	Yes
Search the web	GET /search?q=QUERY	$0.001 (x402)
Monitor a topic	POST /subscribe	Yes
List categories	GET /news/categories	Yes

Rule of thumb: Start with /ask. It's free, smart, and auto-detects if you're asking about news, weather, or crypto prices. Use /news only when you need bulk category browsing with filters.

/ask — Smart Search (FREE)

Searches all 228K+ articles using AI semantic matching + keyword matching + web search fallback. Returns results ranked by relevance and recency.

curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=bitcoin+etf"
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=singapore+startup+funding"
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=climate+policy+europe&limit=20"
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/ask?q=remote+devops+jobs"

Param	Default	Description
q	required	Search query. Replace spaces with +
limit	10	Max results (1-50)

Response:

{
  "success": true,
  "query": "bitcoin etf",
  "source": "news_db",
  "count": 10,
  "results": [
    {
      "title": "SEC Approves Spot Bitcoin ETF Applications",
      "url": "https://example.com/article",
      "summary": "The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved...",
      "category": "crypto",
      "published": "Mon, 24 Mar 2026 14:30:00 +0000",
      "sentiment": "bullish",
      "sentiment_score": 0.75,
      "credibility": "high",
      "entities": {
        "companies": ["SEC"],
        "tickers": [],
        "crypto": ["BTC"],
        "people": []
      },
      "tags": ["markets"]
    }
  ]
}

When /ask finds fewer than 3 results, it automatically falls back to web search. When 0 results, it returns suggestions with related categories and terms.

/trending — Trending Stories (FREE)

Detects stories being covered by multiple independent sources.

curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/trending?hours=12"

Param	Default	Description
hours	6	Lookback window (1-48)
min_sources	3	Minimum sources covering the same story
limit	20	Max trending clusters

/subscribe — Topic Alerts (FREE)

Get webhook notifications when new articles matching your query arrive.

curl -s -X POST https://agenttimes.live/subscribe \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query":"bitcoin regulation","category":"crypto","webhook":"https://your-agent.com/notify"}'

Response: {"success":true,"subscription_id":1,"secret":"abc123...","note":"Save this secret — you need it to unsubscribe."}

Unsubscribe (requires the secret from subscribe response):

curl -s -X DELETE "https://agenttimes.live/subscribe/1?secret=abc123..."

Your webhook receives a POST with matching articles every time new ones arrive (checked every 5 minutes).

Security: Webhook must be a public HTTPS URL. Localhost, private IPs, and cloud metadata endpoints are blocked.

/news — Category Browsing (FREE)

Browse and filter articles by category with optional tag, date range, and keyword filters.

# All crypto news
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/news?category=crypto&limit=10"

# Asian news only
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/news?category=world&tag=asia"

# Singapore news
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/news?category=world&tag=singapore"

# Gaming news
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/news?category=entertainment&tag=gaming"

# Jobs in tech
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/news?category=business&tag=jobs"

# AI news from last 2 days
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/news?category=ai&since=2026-03-22"

# Search within a category
curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/news?category=tech&q=rust+programming"

Param	Default	Description
category	required	One of 14 categories, or all
tag	—	Subcategory/country filter (see table below)
limit	20	Max results (1-1000)
q	—	Keyword filter within category
since	—	ISO date — articles after this time
before	—	ISO date — articles before this time
dedup	true	Deduplicate similar headlines

/search — Web Search ($0.001)

Search the open web via 70+ engines when you need non-news results.

curl -s "https://agenttimes.live/search?q=how+to+deploy+docker"

Param	Default	Description
q	required	Search query
limit	5	Max results (1-50)
category	general	general, news, images, videos, science, files

Categories + Tags

14 categories. Use &tag= on /news to filter by subcategory, country, or region.

Category	What's in it	Available tags
world	International news, geopolitics, diplomacy	asia, europe, middleeast, africa, india, latam, oceania, defense, government + 50 country tags (see below)
politics	Elections, policy, legislation, regulation	—
business	Finance, commerce, employment, markets	finance, startups, jobs, marketing, ecommerce, fintech, realestate, legal, supplychain
tech	Software, hardware, engineering, data	devtools, engineering, mobile, datascience, telecom
ai	Artificial intelligence, machine learning	robotics, research
crypto	Cryptocurrency, blockchain, DeFi	web3, defi, bitcoin, markets
science	Research, discoveries, academia	biotech, space, research
health	Medicine, wellness, public health	fitness
energy	Energy, climate change, environment	climate, environment, agriculture
security	Cybersecurity, infosec, threats	—
sports	All sports coverage	—
entertainment	Film, music, gaming, TV, culture	gaming, film, music
lifestyle	Food, travel, fashion, daily life	food, travel, fashion, design, education
automotive	Vehicles, EVs, transportation, logistics	shipping

Country Tags (use with category=world&tag=COUNTRY)

Asia: singapore, malaysia, philippines, indonesia, thailand, vietnam, japan, korea, china, taiwan, hongkong, india, pakistan, bangladesh

Europe: uk, germany, france, italy, spain, netherlands, sweden, norway, denmark, finland, ireland, poland, austria, switzerland, iceland, romania, hungary, greece, serbia, ukraine, russia

Middle East: israel, turkey, iran, saudiarabia, uae, qatar

Africa: nigeria, southafrica, kenya, ghana, ethiopia

Latin America: brazil, mexico, argentina, colombia, chile, peru

Oceania: australia, newzealand

North America: usa, canada

Response Format

News results (/ask, /news, /trending) return:

{"success": true, "count": N, "results": [...]}

Weather (/ask?q=weather+tokyo) returns: {"source": "open-meteo", "location": "...", "current": {...}, "forecast": [...]}

Crypto prices (/ask?q=bitcoin+price) returns: {"source": "pyth", "prices": [{"symbol": "BTC", "price": 66000}]}

Check the source field to determine response shape: news_db, combined, open-meteo, nea, or pyth.

Each article result contains:

• title — headline
• url — link to original article
• summary — first 200 chars of content
• category — one of 14 categories
• source_feed — RSS feed URL
• published — publication date
• timestamp — Unix timestamp (ms)
• sentiment — "bullish", "bearish", or "neutral"
• sentiment_score — -1.0 (very bearish) to 1.0 (very bullish)
• credibility — "high" (tier 1 outlets), "medium" (established), or "unknown"
• entities — {people, companies, tickers, crypto, locations} extracted by GLiNER + dictionary matching
• tags — subcategory and country tags for this article

Errors: {"success": false, "error": "Missing param: q"}

Payment (x402)

The /search endpoint uses the x402 protocol. Your agent pays $0.001 USDC per request on Base network — no accounts, no subscriptions, just micropayments. All other endpoints are free.

Wallet: 0x536Eafe011786599d9a656D62e2aeAFcE06a96D1 (Base)

Other Free Endpoints

Endpoint	Description
GET /news/categories	List all 14 categories with counts
GET /stats	Database statistics
GET /feeds/health?category=CAT	Per-feed health and status
GET /health	Health check
GET /info	Full API docs (JSON for agents, HTML for browsers)

Tips for Best Results

1. Always start with /ask — it's free, semantic, and handles fallback automatically
2. Country news: Use /ask?q=japan+earthquake not /news?category=japan (no country categories)
3. Filter by country: Use /news?category=world&tag=singapore for source-based filtering
4. Sentiment analysis: Check sentiment_score to gauge market/public mood on a topic
5. Entity detection: Use entities.tickers and entities.crypto to find articles mentioning specific assets
6. Monitor breaking news: POST to /subscribe with a webhook URL to get real-time alerts
7. Parse JSON directly — don't pipe to jq (may not be installed)
8. Replace spaces with + in all query strings
9. Check suggestions when 0 results — it recommends related categories and search terms
10. Credibility matters: Sort by credibility to prioritize tier 1 sources (Reuters, BBC, AP) over unknown blogs