When an agent pays for each query, an unexpected bill is a real problem. A question that looks simple can turn into a large amount of work, and the agent only learns the cost after the work is done.
So Testril quotes the request first.
The quote comes before the work
When you ask Testril for something, it prices the request up front. You see what the data will cost and what it takes to produce before any block is read. Nothing runs until you accept the quote.
For a system that spends its own money, this matters. The agent can weigh the cost against the value of the answer, decide, and only then commit. There are no runaway jobs and no charges for work it did not want.
Paying over the right rail
When the agent accepts, it pays over rails built for software, x402 and MPP, and the data comes back as self-describing JSON. Every step of the exchange is readable by a machine. The agent asks, sees a price, pays, receives the data, and can verify it.
Quoting before computing makes the cost predictable, and it makes per-query data safe to hand to an agent that pays for its own requests.