OpenMerch Email Verify

Verify an email address's deliverability and reputation. Powered by OpenMerch.

Email verify (powered by OpenMerch)

Verify whether an email address is deliverable, and surface basic reputation signals (disposable / free-provider / role address, a quality score), for a single address.

This skill uses OpenMerch to plan, route, and execute the check. You give it one email address; it returns a normalized result plus the raw provider output.

Requirements & cost

This skill uses OpenMerch to plan, route, and execute the email check. OpenMerch is an external paid API: you need an OpenMerch account and an API key, and each verification consumes your OpenMerch account balance/credits. The exact price is confirmed by the /v1/plan call before anything runs — that quote is the source of truth for what you pay (currently roughly $0.006–$0.007 per email, depending on OpenMerch pricing policy). The skill never charges more than the planned max_cost. ClawHub does not handle this billing and takes no fee — the charge is between you and OpenMerch.

Get a key from the Developer page in the OpenMerch app and set it as an environment variable:

export OPENMERCH_API_KEY="om_live_xxxxxxxx"
# Optional — defaults to https://api.openmerch.dev:
# export OPENMERCH_BASE_URL="https://api.openmerch.dev"

What this calls

No hidden network behavior. This skill makes only these OpenMerch HTTP calls, in order:

1. POST {OPENMERCH_BASE_URL}/v1/plan — confirm the job is executable and get the price.
2. POST {OPENMERCH_BASE_URL}/v1/execute — run the verification (one job).
3. GET {OPENMERCH_BASE_URL}/v1/jobs/{job_id} — only if the job is still executing, to poll until it finishes.

Every request sends the header X-OpenMerch-Key: $OPENMERCH_API_KEY. POST bodies send Content-Type: application/json. Base URL is OPENMERCH_BASE_URL or https://api.openmerch.dev.

How to run

You can run this two ways. Both do exactly the same calls.

Option A — reference script (deterministic)

Requires Node 18+ (uses built-in fetch; no npm install):

node verify-email.mjs [e-mail]

It prints a JSON result to stdout (see "Output" below) and exits non-zero on error.

Option B — agent-driven (instructions)

If you (the agent) are running the flow with your own HTTP tools, follow these steps exactly:

1. Plan. POST /v1/plan:

{ "job_type": "email_reputation_v1", "input": { "email": "<EMAIL>" } }

• If the response can_execute is not true, stop and report the reason. Do not execute.
• Set max_cost = quoted_customer_price_microcents if present, otherwise estimated_cost.max_microcents. /v1/plan is the source of truth for the price — never hardcode one.

2. Execute. Generate one UUID v4 as idempotency_key for this submission. POST /v1/execute:

{
  "job_type": "email_reputation_v1",
  "input": { "email": "<EMAIL>" },
  "max_cost": <max_cost from step 1>,
  "idempotency_key": "<uuid>"
}

• Reuse the same idempotency_key if you retry this same submission (e.g. after a timeout). Generate a new key only for a genuinely new verification. This prevents double charges.

3. Poll only if needed. If the execute response status is "executing", poll GET /v1/jobs/{job_id} every ~1s (cap ~8 tries / ~15s) until status is completed, failed, or cancelled. Most runs return completed immediately and no polling is needed.

4. Report. On completed, present the normalized result (below). On failed/cancelled, report error.code and error.message. Always report cost.total_microcents (the actual amount charged) and the job_id.

curl equivalent

BASE="${OPENMERCH_BASE_URL:-https://api.openmerch.dev}"

# 1. Plan
curl -sS -X POST "$BASE/v1/plan" \
  -H "X-OpenMerch-Key: $OPENMERCH_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"job_type":"email_reputation_v1","input":{"email":"[e-mail]"}}'

# 2. Execute
# Replace <MAX_COST_FROM_PLAN> with quoted_customer_price_microcents from /v1/plan,
# or estimated_cost.max_microcents if no quote was returned. Do not hardcode a price.
curl -sS -X POST "$BASE/v1/execute" \
  -H "X-OpenMerch-Key: $OPENMERCH_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"job_type":"email_reputation_v1","input":{"email":"[e-mail]"},"max_cost":<MAX_COST_FROM_PLAN>,"idempotency_key":"'"$(uuidgen)"'"}'

# 3. Poll only if status was "executing"
# curl -sS "$BASE/v1/jobs/<job_id>" -H "X-OpenMerch-Key: $OPENMERCH_API_KEY"

Output

The skill returns a normalized object. The summary fields are best-effort and appear only when the underlying provider response contains them; raw is always the full, unmodified OpenMerch job output and is the source of truth. cost_usd is derived from the actual charged cost.total_microcents.

{
  "email": "[e-mail]",
  "summary": {
    "deliverable": true,
    "is_disposable": false,
    "is_free_email": false,
    "quality_score": 0.95
  },
  "raw": { "...": "verbatim OpenMerch job output" },
  "cost_usd": 0.007,
  "job_id": "…"
}

Notes & limits

• One email per run. For a list, call the skill once per address.
• The skill executes a single atomic OpenMerch job — no multi-step orchestration.
• All monetary values from OpenMerch are in microcents (1 cent = 100,000 microcents; $1.00 = 10,000,000). cost_usd is cost.total_microcents / 10000000.