What does an x402 directory's health label actually test?
Answered from the issue named below, as published on its date. A later issue is a later answer, at its own address.
The answer
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.
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.
The evidence
What ran, when, and the record it produced.
| What ran | When | Record |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
- Sealed days behind the archive figures
- 11
- Observations in that window
- 29,022
- Issue
- Machine Commerce Reality Index: #001 — August 2026
- Published
The terms
The terms this question uses are defined in the glossary.
Corrections and disputes
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Corrections to this issue are on the corrections register, and this answer reads from the record rather than from a copy.