Argyle

# Fix list: Argyle

From Anchor Terminal's listing at https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/argyle, the October 2026 research run, assessed 8 October 2026. Grade B, 63.7 out of 100.

This is everything the published grade says the listing lacks, the biggest possible gain to the total first. It comes from the reason given for each score, the checklist each category was scored against (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist), the provenance checks, the deductions, what we couldn't check and what the review panel asked for. A fix counts at the next check, once it's public.

For a coding agent working on Argyle: work through the items below in the product, its docs and its public pages. Each category gives the reason for its score, with the points each checklist item earned, and the checklist itself, so the gap is the items that earned less than their points. Change the product, not the wording, and keep a note of what you changed and where it's published.

## 1. Payments & pricing, 15 out of 100, up to 10.6 more on the total

Why it scored 15: Read with the hosted rubric. No x402, MPP or L402 (0). No prices are published. The site has no pricing page and fees are set in a Service Order (0). A Sandbox with sample data comes with a Console sign-up, and the sign-up page shows no card step. It reaches no real payroll account, and the size of the trial allowance for real connections is not stated, so partial credit (15 of 20). A person signs up in a browser, and a worker must sign in through Link for every connection (0).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-payments):

The published rubric, also on the [x402 page](https://www.anchorterminal.com/x402/).

- 40, a machine payment protocol (x402, MPP or L402) on the tool's own endpoints. 10 to 30 when it covers only some endpoints or only goes through a third party, and the note says which.
- 20, per-call or per-unit pricing published without a login. 10 for public plan-only pricing, 0 for "contact sales" or prices behind a login.
- 20, a free tier or trial that doesn't need a card.
- 20, autonomous onboarding, meaning an agent can get access without a person signing up in a browser (keyless use, x402, a programmatic key API).

Payment platforms and agent wallets rarely charge for their own API over a machine protocol, so the first line has steps for them, and the highest one that applies counts. 40 when x402, MPP or L402 runs on all their own endpoints, 30 when it runs on part of their own API, 25 when their merchants can accept one, 20 for running a facilitator, 15 for paying as a buyer, and 0 when the only protocol is their own. Merchant acceptance sits above a facilitator because the platform's own customers can charge agents through it, while a facilitator settles for sellers who wire up the protocol themselves. The counter-argument (a facilitator does more for the protocol as a whole) has a point. Each note says which step applied.

Open-source software you run yourself is scored on its hosted or paid option if it has one. A free, self-hosted package with nothing to buy gets 20, 20 and 20 for the last three lines, and 0 to 40 for the first only if it ships a payment protocol.

## 2. Security & auth, 48 out of 100, up to 9.1 more on the total

Why it scored 48: API keys are an ID and secret pair sent by HTTP Basic auth, never in the URL. Any number of named keys can be created per environment and deleted, and the secret is shown once. No per-key scopes or expiry were found (20 of 30). A worker grants each payroll connection through Link and can remove it, and the Console API developer role is kept from personal data. No read-only key was found, and deletes of users, accounts and reports take effect with no confirmation step (10 of 20). Responses carry text from payroll platforms and OCR of uploaded documents. The AI tools page says to keep keys and user data out of prompts, with no guidance on injected text (3 of 15). The sub-processor list mentions in-product audit log data, and responses carry a trace ID. No audit log page or API was found in the reviewed documentation (5 of 15). security.txt is valid with a PGP key, Security Measures are published and the DPA commits to an annual external audit with summaries on request. The trust centre could not be read, no bug bounty was found, and the terms forbid customers running security tests (10 of 20).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-security):

- 0 to 30, the credential model. 30 for OAuth 2.1 with scopes, or scoped and revocable keys with rotation. 20 for plain revocable API keys. 10 for one all-powerful key. 10 off when a secret can travel in a URL query string as a documented option.
- 0 to 20, read-only or least-privilege modes, and confirmation or approval for destructive actions.
- 0 to 15, prompt-injection posture where the tool returns untrusted content (documented mitigations or guidance). A tool that returns no untrusted content gets 10.
- 0 to 15, audit logs or per-call visibility for the operator.
- 0 to 20, a security programme. security.txt or a disclosure policy, a bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001, advisories handled in public.

Models are read for retention, whether API data trains models (and whether that's off by default), zero-retention options and certifications. Frameworks for telemetry defaults, approval hooks, guardrails and sandboxing.

## 3. Agent ergonomics, 58 out of 100, up to 6.8 more on the total

Why it scored 58: `limit` sizes list responses, 10 by default and 200 at most, and reports summarise an account's records. No per-request field selection was found (15 of 25). Cursor paging on every list endpoint, with filters by user, account, employment and date range on the data endpoints (18 of 20). Errors carry a `detail` string or per-field lists, a status code table is published, and connection errors have named codes with causes. General API errors have no machine code. We saw the `detail` shape and an `x-trace-id` header on a live unauthenticated request (13 of 20). No idempotency keys were found. Most of the API is GET, and `external_id` lets a caller find a user before creating a duplicate (5 of 20). Few required parameters on reads. The official SDKs are Link front ends for five platforms, with no server-side client found (7 of 15).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-ergonomics):

- 0 to 25, context cost. For MCP, the number and size of the tool definitions (25 for ten or fewer compact tools, 15 for 11 to 30, 5 for more than 30, plus up to 10 back for toolsets, dynamic loading or read-only subsets). For APIs, whether responses can be sized (field selection, limits, summaries).
- 20, pagination, filtering and output-size controls.
- 20, actionable, documented error responses, codes and messages an agent can recover from.
- 20, idempotency or safe retries, and for MCP the `readOnlyHint` and `destructiveHint` annotations.
- 15, sensible defaults, few required parameters, and official SDKs in at least two languages.

Models are read for tool use, structured output, prompt caching, context length, batch and SDKs. Frameworks for how much code and how many defaults a tool-calling agent with MCP needs.

## 4. Reliability, 81 out of 100, up to 3.8 more on the total

Why it scored 81: Read with the hosted lines and scored on the REST API. status.argyle.com lists seven components with incident history (20). One incident in the 90 days to 8 October 2026. On 6 October Item search in Link and the API was slow from 17:16 to 19:28 UTC, with a fix applied by 18:15. The page marks it major, but it was degraded search and not an API outage, so this reads as minor incidents only (20). The feed's older entries all carry a creation date of 15 September 2026 and resolution dates from 2022 to December 2023, so the record between those dates could not be confirmed. The limit is published as 50 requests a second (15). The docs say to queue rate-limited requests and avoid immediate retry loops. No `Retry-After` header is documented and no idempotency keys were found for the POST endpoints (6 of 15). Service Levels commit to 99 per cent monthly availability with credits, on commercially reasonable efforts (10). The API carries no beta label (10).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-reliability):

Hosted APIs, MCP servers, models and platforms.

- 20, a public status page with component history (Statuspage, Instatus, BetterStack or the vendor's own).
- 0 to 30, the incident record for the last 90 days on that page. 30 for a clean record or trivial incidents only, 20 for minor incidents only, 10 for one major outage (an hour or more of a core API down, or errors across the board), 0 for several. 5 when there's no history we could read, and the note says so.
- 15, rate limits documented with numbers.
- 15, documented 429 or overload handling (Retry-After, backoff guidance), and idempotency keys or safe-retry guidance where writes are involved.
- 10, an SLA published for any paid tier.
- 10, the surface agents use is generally available, not beta or preview.

Local packages, SDKs, frameworks and stdio MCP servers.

- 20, installs from an official package with supported runtimes stated.
- 25, a public CI and test suite, passing on the default branch.
- 0 to 25, open crash or regression issues relative to activity (25 for few and handled, 0 for many, old and unanswered).
- 15, semver discipline and breaking changes called out in a changelog.
- 15, version 1.0 or later, or declared stable.

Protocols are read from their reference implementations, the public facilitators or servers, spec stability and test vectors.

## 5. Schema & documentation, 86 out of 100, up to 2.3 more on the total

Why it scored 86: One OpenAPI 3.0 file at docs.argyle.com/openAPI/argyle-all.yaml with 91 operations and 119 schemas (25). llms.txt and scoped indexes list the guides and reference, each page is served as Markdown, and llms-full.txt holds the whole set (10). Every operation has a description, and a guide explains when to use Verifications and when the Data APIs. Many operation descriptions are one line (15 of 20). Schemas carry 127 enums and 157 required lists (12 of 15). The file has 222 examples and the guides give curl and JSON samples. It documents an error response on only 2 of 91 operations, with errors covered by a status code table and two connection error catalogues (9 of 15). The version is in the path as `/v2`, and a dated public changelog covers API changes (15).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-schema):

APIs and MCP servers.

- 25, a machine-readable contract (a public OpenAPI file or similar; for MCP, typed JSON Schema inputs on every tool).
- 10, llms.txt or Markdown docs served for agents.
- 0 to 20, descriptions that say what a tool is for, when to use it and when not to, read from the tool definitions in the source or the API reference.
- 0 to 15, typed inputs with enums, constraints and required fields, and no free-form JSON blobs.
- 0 to 15, examples and documented error responses.
- 15, versioning and a public changelog.

Models are read from the API reference, the OpenAPI file, llms.txt, the structured-output and tool-use docs and the model cards. Frameworks from docs a model can follow, typed interfaces, examples and the API reference.

## 6. Maintenance & community, 75 out of 100, up to 2.2 more on the total

Why it scored 75: The changelog's latest entries are dated 1 October 2026 (30). Twelve dated entries between 14 July and 1 October 2026 (20). Closed service with a dated changelog that takes subscriptions, and a Support Policy with acknowledgement targets from one business hour. We could not test whether support answers (11 of 15). The Link SDKs are current for React Native (5.15.5, 13 May 2026), iOS (5.15.2) and Flutter (1.14.2). The public Android repository's last commit is 1 August 2024, no server-side SDK was found, and the official MCP registry has no Argyle entry (8 of 15). The React Native repository had dependency updates up to 21 July 2026. We could not confirm the CI result (6 of 10).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-maintenance):

- 0 to 30, time since the last release, or the last published model or API change for a closed service. 30 within 30 days, 20 within 90, 10 within 180, 0 older.
- 20, at least three releases or dated changelog entries in the last 90 days.
- 0 to 25, responsiveness. Issues and pull requests answered on GitHub (the open issues and how recent the replies are). For closed services, a public changelog and a support or community channel that answers, 0 to 15.
- 15, presence in the official MCP registry under a verified namespace (MCP servers), or current official SDKs (APIs and models).
- 10, package health, current dependencies and CI.

Models are read for deprecation notice periods and model churn rather than release counts.

## 7. Transparency & trust, 83 out of 100, up to 1.5 more on the total

Made of editorial 68, provenance 97.

Why it scored 83: Closed service. The Customer Terms, DPA, Service Levels, Support Policy and sub-processor list are public and dated 1 October 2026, and the React Native SDK is Apache 2.0 (17 of 30). The DPA commits to deleting customer data within 90 days of termination and to breach notice within 72 hours. The Privacy Notice says records are deleted when the worker ends a connection and otherwise kept no longer than reasonably necessary, with no fixed periods. It lets Argyle create aggregated and de-identified information from records and give it to others for any lawful purpose (21 of 30). A compatibility section defines breaking changes, and the terms give a customer a cure period and a right to terminate after a modification that harms it. No notice period before a breaking change was found, and ending support for a payroll platform is excluded (10 of 20). The sub-processor list names 20 vendors with locations, and the DPA promises 30 days' notice of additions (20 of 20).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-transparency):

- 0 to 30, source availability and licence clarity. 30 for open source under an OSI licence, 15 for closed with clear terms, 0 for unclear terms.
- 0 to 30, data handling and retention statements that agree with each other (privacy policy, DPA, retention periods, subprocessors).
- 0 to 20, a deprecation policy or notices with dates.
- 0 to 20, telemetry disclosed with an opt-out (local software), or subprocessors and data locations disclosed (hosted).

The other half of Transparency and trust is the provenance score, computed from checked facts (below). The category score is the mean of the two.

Provenance checks not met in full (half of this category, computed from checked facts):

- Terms of service: read, states 7 of the 7 things a reader expects, and has 1 clause that costs points (8 of 10)
- Privacy policy: read, states 7 of the 8 things a reader expects (9.3 of 10)

## What we couldn't check

What we couldn't read counted as absent. Publishing it on a page a plain HTTP fetch can read (not only in a browser) lets the next check count it.

- unchecked: the trust centre at trust.argyle.com. It is drawn by script and our reader saw only the title, so no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 report could be confirmed
- unchecked: live API behaviour beyond one unauthenticated request. We had no Sandbox credentials, so limits, paging and webhooks are as documented
- unchecked: whether Console sign-up issues a Sandbox key at once and whether a card is asked for. Console sits behind a login
- unchecked: the number of free real connections in trial mode today. The only figure found, five, is from a changelog entry dated 2 April 2022
- unchecked: whether 429 responses carry a `Retry-After` header in practice. None is documented
- unchecked: the status record between December 2023 and September 2026. The incident feed's older entries were imported on 15 September 2026
- unchecked: GitHub stars, open issues and CI results for the Link SDK repositories, and whether the Android SDK is released somewhere other than its public repository
- No privacy policy for business customers was found. `provenance.privacy` points at the Privacy Notice that governs workers' records, and customer data falls under the Data Protection Addendum
- The lead was right on the vendor, the interface and the sandbox. The MCP server Argyle documents is a documentation search server and does not reach the API

## Weaknesses

- No price is published. The site has no pricing page, and fees are set in a Service Order agreed with sales
- No idempotency keys were found for `POST /users` or `POST /verifications`, and no `Retry-After` header is documented on 429 responses
- API keys are an ID and secret pair with no per-key scopes or read-only mode found in the reviewed documentation
- The OpenAPI file documents an error response on 2 of 91 operations, and general errors carry a `detail` string with no machine code
- No server-side SDK was found. The official SDKs are Link front ends for web, iOS, Android, React Native and Flutter
- The trust centre is drawn by script and could not be read, so no certification could be confirmed on the day

## What costs an agent a turn today

The notes we give agents before they call it. Each one is a workaround an agent shouldn't need.

- Send HTTP Basic auth with `api_key_id` as the username and `api_key_secret` as the password. Sandbox keys fail with 401 on Production and the reverse
- Create the user with `POST /v2/users` and an `external_id`, then look it up by `external_id` before retrying. No idempotency key was found
- Do not read data straight after an account connects. Wait for the account and data webhooks, or for the verification status, before fetching records
- Follow the full URL in `next` when paging. Do not build cursor values or fetch pages in parallel. `limit` defaults to 10 and stops at 200
- Stay under 50 requests a second. On 429, queue the request and retry later, not at once
- Treat `DELETE /v2/users/{id}` as permanent. It removes every resource tied to that user, with no confirmation step

## When it's done

Send what changed and where it's published as a dispute (https://www.anchorterminal.com/builders/#disputes, or `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/contact` with `"kind": "dispute"`). Disputes are answered in public, and the listing is checked again by the same checklist. Paying for an audit or a listing claim changes nothing here.