{
  "slug": "machine-native-goods",
  "title": "Machine-Native Goods",
  "description": "The types of digital goods and services that agents consume in the headless economy, and the access models through which they are provisioned.",
  "section": "foundations",
  "order": 4,
  "author": "get-headless",
  "url": "https://get-headless.ai/knowledge-base/machine-native-goods/",
  "apiUrl": "https://get-headless.ai/api/knowledge-base/machine-native-goods.json",
  "markdownUrl": "https://get-headless.ai/knowledge-base/machine-native-goods.md",
  "content": "## What agents consume\n\nThe headless economy includes a wide range of goods consumed by software rather than navigated by humans.\n\n### Capabilities and tools\n- APIs\n- CLI tools\n- SDKs\n- MCP-accessible capabilities\n- Workflow primitives\n\n### Data and knowledge\n- Datasets\n- Search and retrieval endpoints\n- Content\n- Documents\n- Facts\n- Structured knowledge\n\n### Infrastructure\n- Model inference\n- Ranking and classification services\n- Authentication and identity services\n- Memory and state services\n- Storage and hosting\n- Observability and monitoring\n- Compute\n\n### Commerce\n- Payment and settlement rails\n\n## Access models\n\nMachine-native goods may be accessed through:\n\n- **Free access** — no cost, no authentication\n- **Open source** — freely available code and tools\n- **Public web access** — publicly available data and content\n- **Freemium** — basic access free, premium features paid\n- **Quota-based usage** — limited free tier, paid beyond limits\n- **Subscription** — recurring payment for access\n- **Per-call pricing** — pay per API invocation\n- **Per-task pricing** — pay per completed task\n- **Per-result pricing** — pay per successful outcome\n- **Enterprise provisioning** — negotiated access and SLAs\n- **Internal/private deployment** — self-hosted or on-premise\n- **Sponsored or subsidized access** — third-party funded\n- **Protocol-mediated settlement** — programmatic payment rails"
}