Tack

Pin to IPFS. Pay with your wallet. No account needed.

Tack is an IPFS pinning and retrieval service where payment is the authentication. No API keys, no signup, no monthly plans. Send a request with a wallet, pay per-use via x402, and your content is pinned for as long as you paid for.

Built for AI agents, developer tooling, and any machine that needs to store data on IPFS without a human creating an account first.

Live Endpoints

Endpoint	URL
API	https://tack-api-production.up.railway.app
Health	GET /health
Agent Card (A2A)	GET /.well-known/agent.json
IPFS Gateway	GET /ipfs/<cid>

Quickstart

# Pin content for 6 months (first call returns 402 with payment requirements)
curl -X POST https://tack-api-production.up.railway.app/pins \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -H 'X-Pin-Duration-Months: 6' \
  -d '{"cid":"bafybeigdyrzt...","name":"example.txt"}'

# After x402 payment, retry with signature
curl -X POST https://tack-api-production.up.railway.app/pins \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -H 'X-Pin-Duration-Months: 6' \
  -H 'payment-signature: <x402-payment-signature>' \
  -d '{"cid":"bafybeigdyrzt...","name":"example.txt"}'
# Response includes info.expiresAt and x-wallet-auth-token header

# Use the owner token on authenticated routes
curl https://tack-api-production.up.railway.app/pins/<requestid> \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <x-wallet-auth-token>'

API

Implements the IPFS Pinning Service API spec.

Method	Path	Auth	Description
POST	/pins	x402 payment	Pin a CID
POST	/upload	x402 payment	Upload a file and pin it
GET	/pins	Wallet identity	List your pins
GET	/pins/:requestid	Wallet identity	Get pin status
POST	/pins/:requestid	Wallet identity	Replace a pin
DELETE	/pins/:requestid	Wallet identity	Delete a pin
GET	/ipfs/:cid	None	Retrieve content (supports ETag, Range)
GET	/health	None	Service health check
GET	/.well-known/agent.json	None	A2A agent discovery

Pricing: Linear by size and duration — max($0.001, fileSizeGB × $0.10 × durationMonths). Settled in USDC on Taiko Alethia via x402. Set X-Pin-Duration-Months header (1–24, default 1) to control how long content stays pinned. Expired pins are automatically cleaned up.

Auth model: Paid endpoints use payment-signature (x402). Successful paid responses return a short-lived x-wallet-auth-token response header. Owner endpoints (list, get, replace, delete) require that bearer token. The wallet that pays owns the pin.

Gateway safety: Tack serves browser-active content types with Content-Disposition: attachment and X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff so HTML/SVG/JS payloads are not executed inline from the API origin.

Retrieval pricing: meta.retrievalPrice is controlled by the first wallet that pins a CID through Tack. Later pins of the same CID cannot redirect premium retrieval payouts.

For AI Agents

Tack exposes an A2A agent card at /.well-known/agent.json. An agent with a wallet can discover Tack, pin content, and pay — no human in the loop.

Limitations

Tack is on its early stages, so the infrastructure and replication guarantees are limited. Do not pin critical files you depend on yet.

Limitation	Impact
SQLite single-writer	API limited to 1 replica; no horizontal scaling
Single Kubo node	Pinned content lives on one IPFS instance; no replication
Railway single-AZ volumes	No automatic recovery if volume is lost
No automated backups	Manual scripts/backup-db.sh before deploys
Kubo ephemeral networking	DHT presence resets on every deploy; slower P2P discovery

Development

git clone <repo-url> && cd tack
pnpm install
cp .env.example .env
pnpm dev          # API on http://localhost:3000

Full stack with Docker:

docker compose up --build
# API: http://localhost:3000 | Kubo RPC: http://localhost:5001 | Gateway: http://localhost:8080

Key commands:

pnpm test         # Run tests (vitest)
pnpm build        # Compile TypeScript
pnpm smoke:x402   # End-to-end x402 payment smoke test

See .env.example for all configuration options. Deployment docs live in docs/.

License

MIT