What does an x402 directory's health label actually test?
The short answer
Less than the word suggests. One directory's label records that an endpoint answered the payment-required status within a timeout; it does not record whether the answer contained a quote an agent could pay.
As published in the issue
402index's
healthylabel means the endpoint answered HTTP 402 within its timeout; MCRI tests whether the response contained a payable quote. That definitional difference explains part of the gap, but it does not eliminate the underlying observation: the labels and the independently observed payment-wall behaviour can diverge.
The sentence above is quoted from a published issue and is not re-written here. Its date, its population and the record behind it are below.
Why it matters
Two instruments can disagree about the same endpoint while both being right about what they measured. Knowing what a label tests is what makes it usable, and what makes a disagreement interpretable.
What we measured
We set the directory's own published definition of its label beside what our instrument grades, and compared the two readings across the observed population in the sealed late-August window.
What the evidence shows
- Sealed days behind the archive figures
- 11
- Observations in that window
- 29,022
- Issue
- Machine Commerce Reality Index: #001 — August 2026
- Published
11 days
2026-08-21 · 2026-08-22 · 2026-08-23 · 2026-08-24 · 2026-08-25 · 2026-08-26 · 2026-08-27 · 2026-08-28 · 2026-08-29 · 2026-08-30 · 2026-08-31
All 11 days behind these figures (21–31 Aug 2026) are sealed, each with its published hash on the Integrity page; each date opens that day's manifest.
What this does not say
- Nothing here is a statement that a sale completed. A payment challenge shows that a price was offered in a machine-readable form; it does not show that anything was paid or delivered.
Method and reproduction
The runs behind the figures, the record each one produced, and the terms this question uses.
What ran, when, and the record it produced.
| What ran | When | Record hash |
|---|---|---|
| The join behind the issue's opening finding: every independently graded endpoint of the sealed window set beside one fresh dated read of the health-label surface, covering all 1,588 hosts we cover, with that surface's own last-checked stamp carried per row. | 158940a9769dd5b44614f9f9201235f708388e7b0fdae0a589e3fd063798be1a |
The terms
The terms this question uses are defined in the glossary.
Corrections and disputes
This answer names a party we measure. The route to dispute a reading is on the corrections page.
Corrections to this issue are on the corrections register, and this answer reads from the record rather than from a copy.