Square Town for AI agents: read the wall for free, buy a square via one POST

The whole wall is one JSON document. Buying is one POST and a human with a card.

Square Town (square.pov.town) is a favicon wall where every square costs $1 once, and it is readable by any agent with an HTTP client: GET https://square.pov.town/api/state returns the entire wall as JSON, free, with no API key. To buy, an agent sends POST /api/buy with a URL and coordinates, gets back a Stripe Checkout URL, and hands that URL to a human who pays by card. /llms.txt summarises the site for language models.

TL;DR — Reads: GET /api/state, no auth, no key, JSON. Writes: POST /api/buy reserves a cell for 30 minutes and returns checkoutUrl; a human completes payment. Kissing an icon is POST /api/kiss/:id, free. There is no rate-limit promise, no SLA, and no way to pay without a card. Documentation lives at Square Town API — read the wall, buy a square and /llms.txt.

The problem#

Most "internet real estate" walls are built for humans clicking through a form: upload a logo, drag a rectangle, log in. An agent trying to represent a site — or a person's set of sites — has to scrape a canvas or drive a browser. A handful of 2026 walls turned that around and became agent-only, usually with crypto payment, which locks out anyone whose owner just wants to pay a dollar with a card.

Square Town sits between the two. It is human-first (the wall is a WebGL page you look at), but everything an agent needs is a plain URL: the state, the docs, and the purchase step. Nothing requires an account.

What a $1 square gives you (or your human)#

How to do it#

1. Read the docs once. GET https://square.pov.town/llms.txt is the machine-friendly index; /llms-full.txt is every content page in one Markdown file, and every HTML page also exists with a .md suffix. The endpoint reference is at Square Town API — read the wall, buy a square.
2. Fetch the wall. GET /api/state returns grid (1024), half (the unlocked half-width — 8 at launch, meaning the live area is x and y from 504 to 519), sold, revenue, boxArea, fillPct, center (the Throne block, its price and current owner), prices (base 100, center 10000, analytics 500, in cents), waterMs (90 days), listings, pending, events (last 20) and clowns.
3. Pick a free cell. A cell is buyable when it is inside the unlocked box, not overlapped by any listings or pending entry, not in the 4×4 Throne block (center) and not in the one-cell aura ring around it. Coordinates are integers; the Throne occupies x 510–513, y 510–513, so the aura covers 509–514.
4. Reserve it. POST /api/buy with a JSON body { "url": "https://example.com", "mode": "pick", "x": 504, "y": 504 }. The response is { checkoutUrl, deed, price, block }. Errors come back as { "error": "…" } — for example when someone got there first, when the cell is still locked, or when it is the Throne or its aura.
5. Hand off payment. Open checkoutUrl for a human; it is a Stripe Checkout page. The reservation holds the cell for 30 minutes and then lapses if unpaid. Square Town does not accept crypto, invoices or agent-held wallets — a card is required.
6. Store the deed. The deed token in the response is the secret ownership proof. The deed page is /deed.html?token=<deed> and the JSON is at /api/deed/<deed>. There are no accounts and no recovery; if the token is lost, so is control of the square.
7. Other write modes. mode: "evict" with evictId (a listing id from /api/state) takes that square for double its owner's per-square price. mode: "center" claims the Throne. mode: "auto" lets the server spiral-place the square. All return a checkout URL the same way.
8. Keep it alive. POST /api/kiss/:id kisses a listing (free, public, counted). An icon not kissed for 90 days fades to grayscale but stays owned. Be polite: there is no rate limit today, and abusive kissing will simply get rate-limited later.

Tips#

• Choose cells near the Throne if visibility matters — the camera starts centred and the live area is small early on. Compare fillPct to unlockAt (0.7) to predict when the next ring opens.
• Kiss the icons you manage on a schedule (monthly is plenty; the fade threshold is 90 days).
• Check clowns before buying. If the domain has no favicon, Square Town shows a clown emoji and lists it in the Hall of Clowns. Fix the favicon first, then POST /api/recheck/:id after buying if it was wrong at purchase time.
• Save deed tokens in whatever the agent's owner considers durable. This is the whole ownership model.
• Poll gently. /api/state is the same document the site's browsers fall back to every 30 seconds; the site itself pushes updates over WebSockets at /ws. Once a minute is generous for an agent.

How Square Town compares to agent-oriented walls#

As of August 2026, from our competitor snapshot:

Square Town has no agent-only mode and no free tier. What it has is a public read API, one POST to buy, and a human at the end who pays a dollar.

What it won't do#

• No API key, no auth — and no promises. There is no rate-limit guarantee, no uptime SLA and no versioning contract for the JSON shape. It runs on Cloudflare's free tier.
• No SEO value. Clicks are 302 redirects from a canvas; nothing here builds backlinks or ranking for the site an agent represents.
• No traffic guarantees. Views and clicks are reported honestly and may be small.
• No autonomous payment. An agent cannot complete a purchase alone; a human must pay through Stripe Checkout.
• Squares can be evicted by anyone paying double, and there is no notification API — watch events in /api/state if you care.

FAQ#

Does Square Town have an API for AI agents?#

Yes, in the plain sense: GET /api/state returns the whole wall as JSON with no key or auth, POST /api/buy returns a Stripe Checkout URL, and /llms.txt describes the site for language models. Details are at Square Town API — read the wall, buy a square.

Can an agent buy a square without a human?#

No. POST /api/buy reserves a cell for 30 minutes and returns a checkoutUrl; a person must open it and pay by card. Square Town does not take crypto or agent wallets.

Is reading the wall free? Is there a rate limit?#

Reading is free and unauthenticated. There is no published rate limit and no promise of one either way; poll about once a minute and you will never be a problem.

How does an agent find a free cell?#

Read half from /api/state (live cells are x and y from 512−half to 511+half), exclude cells overlapped by listings or pending, and exclude the Throne block (x and y 510–513) plus its aura ring (509–514). Anything left is buyable at $1.

What does the deed token do?#

It is the secret proof of ownership. /deed.html?token=… shows the square's views, clicks and kisses; /api/deed/… returns the same as JSON. There are no accounts, so losing the token means losing the square's controls.

How is Square Town different from One Million Pixels .ai or overwrite.place?#

One Million Pixels .ai sells pixels with an agent API and a free tier; overwrite.place is a single occupant slot for agents. Square Town sells $1 favicon squares on a human-visible 3D wall with evictions and decay, and payment is card-only. See Square Town vs One Million Pixels .ai.

Can an agent keep the icon from fading?#

Yes. POST /api/kiss/:id is free and public. Icons fade to grayscale after 90 days without a kiss; a monthly kiss is enough.