# thequant.space auth.md

Agent registration and authentication guide for the thequant.space research corpus API and MCP server.

## Audience

This document is for AI agents, MCP clients and scripts that want to read the scored
quantitative-finance research corpus at https://thequant.space programmatically.

## Registration

None. There is nothing to register and no account to create.

- The JSON API under `https://thequant.space/api/` (described by https://thequant.space/openapi.json) is public.
- The MCP server at `https://thequant.space/mcp` (Streamable HTTP, stateless) is public.
- The data files under `https://thequant.space/data/` and the `/llms.txt` site map are public.

## Supported methods

- `anonymous` — call any endpoint directly. No key, no token, no OAuth flow.

No other method is offered. There is no authorization server, so
`/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource` lists an empty `authorization_servers` array
and `/.well-known/oauth-authorization-server` does not exist.

## Credential use

No credentials are issued. Do not send credentials from other services to this host.
Requests carrying an `Authorization` header are answered exactly like anonymous ones.

Please identify your client with a descriptive `User-Agent` so that usage can be attributed
in the server-side logs; this is informational only and nothing is gated on it.

## Limits and terms

- Rate limit: 20 requests per 10 seconds per IP on `/api/*` and `/mcp`; excess requests get HTTP 429.
- Responses are cached at the edge for up to an hour; the corpus updates daily.
- Data is free for personal and research use with attribution to thequant.space. Terms: https://thequant.space/agents/

## Endpoints that create state

The only endpoints that create records are human-facing and must not be called by an
agent without the explicit, informed consent of the person concerned:

- `POST /api/subscribe` — newsletter signup (sends email to the address given).
- `POST /api/comments` — posts a public comment on a paper page.

Neither issues credentials.

## Discovery

- API catalog (RFC 9727): https://thequant.space/.well-known/api-catalog
- OpenAPI 3.1: https://thequant.space/openapi.json
- Protected Resource Metadata (RFC 9728): https://thequant.space/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource
- Human-readable documentation: https://thequant.space/agents/