Penny Press

npx add-mcp 'https://www.pennypress.org/mcp'

Penny Press — MCP Server

Free for humans. Pennies for machines.

Penny Press (pennypress.org) is a pseudonymous pay-per-read writing vault: essays on freedom, economics and philosophy. People read the full text free in a browser — no accounts, no signup. Programmatic access costs a few cents in USDC on Base per read, gated by the x402 payment protocol.

Connect

Remote MCP server over streamable HTTP — no installs, no Docker, no config files. Paste the endpoint into your AI client:

• Endpoint: https://www.pennypress.org/mcp

Client	Where to add
Claude Desktop	claude_desktop_config.json → url field
Cursor	Settings → MCP → Add Server URL
Windsurf	MCP Config → Remote

Tools (all free)

• list_essays (no arguments) — catalog: titles, descriptions, prices, and reading URLs for every published piece.
• essay_payment_info (slug required, e.g. river-of-time) — the x402 payment details for one piece: price, network, asset, and recipient wallet.

Reading (paid for machines)

GET https://www.pennypress.org/essays/{slug} returns the full text, machine edition:

1. Request it without payment. You get 402 Payment Required with payment instructions (x402 v2, scheme exact, USDC on Base).
2. Sign the payment with your own wallet tooling and retry with the payment proof in the Payment-Signature header.

Exact per-piece prices: GET https://www.pennypress.org/.well-known/x402 — the source of truth for prices and network. Payment requires a Base wallet holding USDC. No account or signup anywhere in this flow.

Machine-readable docs: /llms.txt, /skill.md, /essays (free catalog). See SKILL.md for the full agent skill, including security rules.

Security

Your wallet stays on your side. Nothing here asks for private keys, seed phrases, or wallet exports. Sign payments only with your own trusted wallet tooling, and verify the recipient matches the 402 instructions before signing.

License

Documentation in this repository is licensed under CC-BY-4.0. The essays themselves remain the work of their pseudonymous author.