Learn
Whether you are building AI agents that monitor federal courts or exploring what agentic commerce means for your legal or compliance workflow — this is where to start.
Developer track
I'm building an AI agent.
Start with the integration page, then come here for deeper context on federal court data, x402 payments, and agent architecture.
Professional track
I work in law, compliance, or finance.
Start here to understand what federal court monitoring means for your workflow — and how to get an AI agent working for you without writing code yourself.
Federal courts & PACER
5 articles
Developer
Federal courts, PACER & CM/ECF: a developer's guide
How the federal court system is organized, what PACER is, how CM/ECF works, and why this data matters for AI agents.
Developer · Professional
The highest-volume federal courts and why they matter
SDNY, Delaware bankruptcy, NDCA — why these courts concentrate the most commercially significant litigation in the US.
Developer · Professional
Federal case number format: a complete reference
How to read and construct federal case numbers. Division, year, type, sequence — with examples across court types.
Developer
PACER vs CourtListener vs DocketLayer: which to use
Three ways to access federal court data. Different use cases, different tradeoffs. Which one is right for your workflow.
Developer
How to query PACER programmatically in 2026
The technical reality of PACER access — session management, scraping, normalization — and why DocketLayer abstracts it away.
Agentic commerce & x402
6 articles
Developer · Professional
Agentic commerce and x402: the complete guide
What agentic commerce is, how x402 enables machine-to-machine payments, and what it means for the infrastructure layer of the internet.
Developer · Professional
The headless merchant: infrastructure for the agentic economy
The a16z thesis on agentic commerce — what it means to build a service for walleted agents rather than human browsers.
Developer
x402 vs MPP: what's the difference?
Two protocols, one mission. How x402 and the Machine Payments Protocol relate, where they differ, and why DocketLayer works with both.
Developer · Professional
HTTP 402: the dormant standard that's finally live
402 Payment Required has been in the HTTP spec since 1996. Here's why it took 30 years to matter — and why it matters now.
Developer · Professional
Why legal data is the sleeper vertical in agentic commerce
Court records, compliance data, regulatory filings — the most commercially significant structured data in the US economy, largely untapped by agents.
Professional
The intention economy: what it means for legal data
Simon Taylor's framing of agents that arrive with intent already formed — and what that shift means for legal and compliance workflows.
Wallets & payments
3 articles
Developer · Professional
How to build a walleted agent that uses DocketLayer
A complete guide from zero — what a walleted agent is, how to set one up, and how to connect it to federal court monitoring. No prior coding experience assumed.
Developer
x402 and Solana wallet setup guide
Create a Solana wallet, fund it with USDC, and configure x402 in your agent. Step by step in Python and JavaScript.
Developer · Professional
How to fund a Solana agent wallet with USDC
Where to get USDC, how to get it onto Solana, and how much to fund your agent wallet for your expected query volume.
Use cases
4 articles
Professional
AI agents for debt collection: federal docket monitoring
How debt collection agents use federal court monitoring to detect judgments, bankruptcy filings, and case status changes — and act automatically.
Professional
Litigation monitoring for compliance teams
How compliance officers use automated federal court monitoring to track regulatory enforcement actions and counterparty litigation in real time.
Professional
Bankruptcy monitoring for lenders and creditors
Chapter 7 and Chapter 11 filings are public record the moment they happen. How lenders use DocketLayer to know instantly when a borrower files.
Professional
How law firms can automate docket monitoring with AI
Managing docket monitoring across dozens of active matters is manual, expensive, and error-prone. Here's how AI agents change that equation.
State courts
4 articles
Developer · Professional
State courts and AI agents: an overview
How state courts differ from federal courts, what kinds of cases they handle, and why state court monitoring is the natural next frontier for legal AI agents.
Developer
Tyler Technologies Odyssey: developer's guide
Odyssey is the dominant state court case management platform. How it works, which states use it, and how DocketLayer will integrate it in Phase 3.
Developer · Professional
Tyler Odyssey: which states use it?
A complete jurisdiction map of Tyler Odyssey deployments across the US — which states, which court types, and what public access looks like in each.
Developer · Professional
Federal vs state court monitoring: key differences
Different systems, different data, different access models. What changes when you move from federal to state court monitoring — and what stays the same.