BlockRun

One wallet, pay-per-call, no API keys. Every paid tool below settles in USDC over x402 at the moment of the call.

Never quote a price from memory

There is no price table in this skill, and that is deliberate. Every flat per-call price published in this repo drifted by exactly the per-transaction fee the last time that fee changed, because each one was a typed copy. Read prices from a live source instead:

Need	Where
Per-token model pricing	blockrun_models
What a call will actually cost	the 402 response — it carries the real amount
Full endpoint catalog with prices	https://blockrun.ai/llms.txt (Base) · https://sol.blockrun.ai/llms.txt (Solana)

The tool descriptions in the MCP server carry current prices too; they are generated, not typed.

The two chains are not the same gateway

blockrun.ai and sol.blockrun.ai are separate deployments, and blockrun_wallet action: "chain" switches between them mid-session. Two consequences, both easy to miss because nothing announces the switch:

Prices differ, on purpose. Every figure in these skills is the Base price. Base adds a flat per-transaction fee; Solana deliberately adds none — the ~$0.001-per-call gap is pricing policy (an incentive to settle on Solana), not drift, so do not expect it to be "fixed". Each gateway's own llms.txt quotes its own convention — read the one for the chain you are on, or just read the 402.

Some tools do not exist on Solana at all. Verified against both gateways 2026-08-07:

Tool	On Solana	What you get
blockrun_defi	✗ not served	404 — reads like a bad path, but the path is fine
blockrun_modal	✗ not served	503 on all four sandbox actions — reads like an outage
everything else	✓	~$0.001 cheaper than the figure printed here

Both tools now refuse before the round trip and tell you to switch, so you should never see the raw 404/503 through the MCP. If you are calling the HTTP API directly you will, and neither status says "wrong chain" — check the chain first.

The same applies to counts. Where a number has a canonical source it is wrapped in a br: HTML-comment marker in this file, regenerated from brand-numbers.json by scripts/sync-brand-numbers.mjs and enforced in CI by --check. Add the marker rather than the digits — an unmarked number is invisible to that check, which is exactly how the prices drifted.

Getting a first call working

Free, no wallet, no key. 5 open-weight chat models cost nothing. Use blockrun_chat with mode: "free" — the parameter is mode, not routing, and an unrecognised key is silently dropped, which lands you on the paid balanced tier instead. Calling the HTTP API directly, a free model needs no wallet and no X-PAYMENT header at all; it returns 200 on the first request rather than a 402.

Do this first whenever a language model is all the task needs — it is the shortest path to something working, and it costs nothing if it turns out to be the wrong approach.

When you need the paid catalog, check the balance with blockrun_wallet (action: "status"). If it is zero:

1. blockrun_wallet action: "setup" prints the address and a funding QR.
2. To fund with a card, blockrun_wallet action: "deposit" mints a one-time Coinbase Onramp link and opens it. The call itself is free. Base only — on Solana it returns address and QR guidance instead, so fund Solana by transfer.
3. Or send USDC to the address on Base or Solana.

Do not fund a wallet inside an ephemeral sandbox (Claude Cowork / Desktop / Web). The key lives in ~/.blockrun/ on whatever filesystem you are on, and if that is a throwaway VM the USDC goes with it. In a sandbox, use the free models or hand the user the command to run locally.

Deeper wallet, budget and x402 mechanics — including calling the HTTP API directly — are in rules/wallet-and-payment.md.

Which tool

The question	Tool	Notes
Anything a language model can answer	blockrun_chat	See routing modes below
Make an image	blockrun_image	Also /edit for changes to an existing image
Make a video	blockrun_video	Async — submit, then poll
Video of one specific real person	blockrun_realface	Enroll a face, then pass real_face_asset_id to blockrun_video
Make music	blockrun_music	Full-length tracks
Speak text aloud	blockrun_speech	Also sound effects
"What just happened" — news, live web	blockrun_search	Freshest; priced per source
Research, papers, competitors, page contents	blockrun_exa	Semantic, not keyword
Event odds, betting markets	blockrun_markets	Reading only
Polymarket positions, open orders, order preview	blockrun_polymarket_read	Reads and previews only — structurally cannot sign
Actually place a Polymarket bet	blockrun_polymarket	Real money — confirm-gated. Setup and funds-affecting actions only
Token / FX / commodity price	blockrun_price	Crypto, FX and commodities are free
DEX pairs and liquidity	blockrun_dex	Free
DeFi TVL, yields	blockrun_defi
On-chain SQL, wallet labels, social mindshare	blockrun_surf	The deep crypto tool
Raw JSON-RPC against a chain	blockrun_rpc	40 chains, one gateway
Phone lookup, buy a number, make an AI call	blockrun_phone	Buy the number first
Run code in a remote container / on a GPU	blockrun_modal	Prefer local for normal repo work
Which models exist, and what they cost	blockrun_models
Balance, funding, spend caps	blockrun_wallet

The crypto tools overlap heavily. Prefer the free ones (blockrun_price, blockrun_dex) when they already answer the question, and reach for blockrun_surf only when they do not.

Picking a chat model

blockrun_chat takes a mode instead of a model id. Default to balanced — it is what an omitted mode resolves to anyway, and it is the right answer for most requests.

mode	Reach for it when	Speed
balanced	The default. General work, code, analysis	Medium
fast	Latency matters more than depth — classification, extraction, short replies	Fastest
powerful	Frontier models. Hard reasoning, work you would not want to redo	Slowest
reasoning	Multi-step logic, maths, proofs	Slow
coding	Code generation and refactors specifically	Medium
glm	Cheap and strong at code	Fast
cheap	High volume, low stakes	Fast
free	Anything where "good enough and free" wins	Fast

Two things to know about free: it routes to the open-weight tier only, and that path caps very long inputs. Through the MCP the truncation is reported — the response carries a note saying roughly what fraction of the prompt never reached the model — but a direct HTTP call gets no such warning, so do not send a large document over the free tier and assume the answer covered all of it. mode is ignored entirely when you pass an explicit model.

Name a specific model only when the user names one, or when a task genuinely needs that model's quirk. Otherwise a mode is both cheaper and more robust to the catalog moving.

For media, the picking advice lives with the generation tools, and blockrun_models is authoritative — this list would go stale within a release.

Cost discipline

• Failed requests are not charged. Settlement happens on success only, so a non-2xx costs nothing and retrying after an upstream error is free. Do not let a failure stop you retrying.
• Check the balance before an expensive call. Video generation is the priciest category by a wide margin — a single call can cost more than a thousand chat calls.
• Free before paid. blockrun_price (crypto/FX/commodities), blockrun_dex, and the free chat tier cost nothing. Reach for them before their paid equivalents.
• Set a cap for unattended work. blockrun_wallet action: "budget" sets a session spend ceiling; action: "delegate" gives a sub-agent its own allowance.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	What it means
402 Payment Required came back twice	The signature did not verify. Check the wallet has a key and the chain matches the requirements.
"Insufficient balance"	blockrun_wallet action: "status", then fund — or switch to a free model.
Balance funded but still zero	Wait for network confirmation and re-check; Base finality is seconds, not instant.
A model id 404s	It was delisted. blockrun_models for the live list; some ids redirect, some are gone.
Video job never finishes	Video is async by design. Poll the job id; minutes, not seconds.
Price does not match what you expected	Read the 402, not a remembered figure. Prices move.
Per-call cap refused to sign	That is a client-side spending hook, not BlockRun rejecting the call.

Related skills

Install from the same marketplace for depth on one area: search, exa-research, crypto-data, surf, rpc, prediction-markets, polymarket-trading, image-prompting, phone, modal.

/plugin marketplace add BlockRunAI/blockrun-mcp