Agent setup

Install Researcher for agents

Use Researcher when an agent needs cited article/video analysis, a durable research report, research-memory recall, or a sourced answer from a known corpus. API keys work; wallet-native paid calls work without signup.

Codex MCP

Use a customer rk_ key when one is already available. The hosted MCP endpoint also supports wallet-native paid calls from clients that implement x402/MPP challenges. 

export RESEARCHER_TOKEN="rk_..."
codex mcp add researcher-now --url https://researcher.now/mcp --bearer-token-env-var RESEARCHER_TOKEN

Wallet-native, no key

A paid call with no key returns a payment challenge. Authorize it from a funded wallet; the response returns a durable rk_ key in X-Researcher-Agent-Key for later reads and management. 

curl -L https://tempo.xyz/install | bash
tempo wallet login

# Ask a public expert corpus from the wallet.
tempo request https://researcher.now/v1/entities/paul-graham/chat \
  --json '{"message":"How should I pick startup ideas?","depth":"quick"}'

Hermes

The plugin registers the same tool names agents see on MCP. If the Hermes CLI cannot see pip-installed plugins, add researcher-now to plugins.enabled in ~/.hermes/config.yaml. 

pip install -U researcher-now
hermes plugins enable researcher-now

First useful call: ask a known corpus

Use ask_corpus when the agent already knows the corpus slug. It reuses persona consult billing, citations, sessions, and depth. Use list_personas first when the slug is ambiguous. 

{
  "tool": "ask_corpus",
  "arguments": {
    "corpus": "paul-graham",
    "question": "How should I pick startup ideas?",
    "depth": "quick"
  }
}

Reference surfaces