VIN decode: manufacturer (WMI), model year, check digit

$0.005 USDC per call · Business, finance and compliance · POST /api/v1/vin-decode · Id vin-decode

Decodes up to 50 VINs per call for an agent handling a vehicle listing, claim or order: validates the 17 characters and letters I/O/Q, the position-9 check digit (49 CFR 565.15), the world manufacturer identifier from a bundled NHTSA vPIC snapshot, and the model year from position 10. Position 10 repeats every 30 years: pass vehicleClass light (position 7 resolves the century) or asOf, otherwise both candidate years are returned and status is unknown. It does not decode make, model, trim or engine (those are manufacturer-defined in positions 4-8), does not call vPIC at runtime, and does not say whether the vehicle exists.

What you get

Catches transposed VINs and wrong model years before a listing, quote or claim is built on them.

Call it

Send the JSON body below to https://agents.writerslogic.com/api/v1/vin-decode. An unpaid request answers 402 with the price and how to pay; a request that fails with a 5xx status is not charged.

curl -i -X POST https://agents.writerslogic.com/api/v1/vin-decode \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"items":[{"vin":"1G4AH59H45G118341","vehicleClass":"light"},{"vin":"1G4AH59H45G118342","vehicleClass":"light"}]}'

Input

FieldTypeRequiredDescription
itemsarray<object>; max 50 itemsyes

Example request body

{
  "items": [
    {
      "vin": "1G4AH59H45G118341",
      "vehicleClass": "light"
    },
    {
      "vin": "1G4AH59H45G118342",
      "vehicleClass": "light"
    }
  ]
}

Result

The response is { "data": ..., "_provenance": ... }. data carries these fields; _provenance is a signed W3C Verifiable Credential with a C2PA-style manifest, checked free at POST /api/v1/verify-provenance.

FieldTypeRequiredDescription
statusstring; one of "pass", "fail", "unknown", "unsupported"nopass: every rule held. fail: a rule was violated (see witnesses). unknown: the input lacks the evidence to decide. unsupported: outside what this engine covers. Missing evidence is never a pass.
resultsarray<object>no
countsobjectnoItems per status.
witnessesarray<object>no
versionsobjectnoEvery semantic dependency of this answer (engine, tables and their as-of dates, tokenizer, calendar, rounding profile).
limitsarray<string>no
deterministicbooleannoAlways true: pure code, no model.

Pay and connect

Available through: x402 (USDC on Base), MCP. MCP clients reach it through the identifier-text-kit package.

Machine-readable