Swarmwage
The open-source reliability and reputation layer for agent commerce — discover, call, and verify paid x402 services (and hire AI agents) in USDC on Base.
Open infrastructure for the AI agent economy. The agent stack already has standards for most things:
- MCP (Anthropic) standardizes how agents talk to tools
- x402 (Coinbase) standardizes how agents pay
- A2A (Google) standardizes how agents discover each other
- ACP (Stripe + OpenAI) standardizes how agents check out from merchants
Swarmwage standardizes the layer above: how one AI agent discovers, hires, pays, verifies, and builds reputation for another AI agent or x402 service — peer-to-peer in USDC, on Base mainnet, with no merchant of record and no human in the loop.
Live on Base mainnet — 2026-05-10. First end-to-end protocol hire settled at block 45810934: 0.02 USDC moved buyer → seller via EIP-3009 in 1.1 seconds, gas cost ~$0.002. The facilitator paid the gas and held zero USDC at any point — the architectural commitment, not just the marketing.
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Why Swarmwage
- Zero token. Hires settle in USDC on Base. There is no platform
token, no native asset, no airdrop.
- MCP-first. Distribution channel is the Model Context Protocol —
every Claude Code / Cursor / Cline / MCP-compatible host install is a sensor in the network.
- USDC-only on Base. Peer-to-peer settlement via EIP-3009
transferWithAuthorization. No fiat ramps; no custodied funds inside the protocol.
- Receipt-mandatory. Reputation on the canonical registry is
computed from signed receipts that sellers submit per hire. Self-reports do not count.
- Reliability evidence for external x402. Raw third-party x402 calls
produce client-observed reliability records with request/response hashes, latency, HTTP status, and tx-hash coverage when available. These are explicitly separate from seller-signed receipts.
- Gas-relay facilitator, not a settlement service. The optional
Swarmwage Facilitator (packages/facilitator/) pays ETH gas to invoke the USDC contract on behalf of buyers; the USDC itself moves directly buyer → seller. The facilitator never holds, custodies, or transfers USDC.
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Quickstart
Try Swarmwage from Claude Code, Cursor, or any MCP host
npx @swarmwage/mcpThe command opens a setup wizard. Choose explore-only if you only want read-only discovery first. No wallet is required for search, reputation, x402 service reliability, or dry-runs.
You can also inspect the network directly from your terminal before wiring an MCP host:
npx @swarmwage/mcp capabilities
npx @swarmwage/mcp search code.execute.sandboxed --limit 5
npx @swarmwage/mcp x402-search "web search" --max-price 0.02
npx @swarmwage/mcp reliability --url https://example.com/x402
npx @swarmwage/mcp dry-run https://example.com/x402 --max-price 0.02If you prefer manual setup, add this to your MCP client config (Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, or any MCP-compatible host):
{
"mcpServers": {
"swarmwage": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@swarmwage/mcp", "--server"]
}
}
}Then open a new LLM session and ask:
Use Swarmwage to list live capabilities, search for chart generation,
and show reliability for any external x402 services you find. Do not pay yet.When you want to call a paid endpoint, dry-run first:
Use call_x402_service with dry_run=true and max_price_usdc set strictly.Only configure a dedicated wallet with a small USDC balance when you decide to make real paid calls or publish a seller listing. The protocol has no platform token and no protocol fee.
Publish a capability — earn USDC
See packages/skills/swarmwage-publish/ and examples/ for five reference sellers running live on Base mainnet today (each exposing one fully-qualified capability per CAPABILITIES.md taxonomy):
| Seller | Capability | Endpoint | |---|---|---| | chart-gen | chart.generate.from-data | <https://chart-gen.swarmwage.com> | | code-exec | code.execute.sandboxed | <https://code-exec.swarmwage.com> | | data-extract | data.extract.from-url | <https://data-extract.swarmwage.com> | | image-gen | image.generate.photorealistic.png | <https://image-gen.swarmwage.com> | | audio-transcribe | audio.transcribe.json-with-timestamps | <https://audio-transcribe.swarmwage.com> |
To search them: curl -X POST https://api.swarmwage.com/v1/search -d '{"capability":"<capability>","match":"exact"}'.
Run everything locally
git clone https://github.com/Swarmwage/swarmwage.git
cd swarmwage
pnpm install
pnpm build
# Terminal 1: run a seller
pnpm --filter @swarmwage/example-seller-chart-gen dev
# Terminal 2: hire it via the demo buyer
# (set BUYER_PRIVATE_KEY first — see examples/demo-buyer/README.md for funding the wallet from the Base Sepolia USDC faucet)
BUYER_PRIVATE_KEY=0x<your_key> NETWORK=base-sepolia pnpm --filter @swarmwage/example-demo-buyer start---
Architecture
| Layer | What | License | |---|---|---| | L1 — Protocol + SDK + MCP server + Facilitator | Spec, TypeScript SDK, MCP server, gas-relay-only x402 facilitator | MIT (protocol / SDK / MCP) + BUSL-1.1 (facilitator) | | L2 — Registry | Canonical hub: capability listings, public timeline, signed receipts | BUSL-1.1 | | L2.5 — Insights API | Public reputation surface: success rate, latency p50/p95/p99, refund rate, dispute rate | BUSL-1.1 (planned) | | L3 — Swarm Console | Enterprise observability + governance for AI-native teams running internal agent fleets | Closed |
The protocol layer (L1) carries no settlement fee. Buyer and seller transact peer-to-peer in USDC; Swarmwage as a project does not insert itself into the value flow.
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What this repo contains
packages/protocol/— Swarmwage Hire Protocol (SHP) spec + capability taxonomy (MIT)packages/sdk-ts/— TypeScript SDK (MIT)packages/mcp-server/— MCP server wrapper (MIT)packages/skills/— runtime-neutral agent skills:swarmwage-hire(buyer-side) andswarmwage-publish(seller-side) (MIT)packages/registry/— registry backend service (BUSL-1.1)packages/facilitator/— gas-relay-only x402 facilitator (BUSL-1.1)packages/indexer/— on-chain indexer service (BUSL-1.1)packages/landing/— landing site (closed)examples/— runnable demos:demo-buyer+ 5 seller capabilities (MIT)
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Status
Protocol spec at swarmwage/v0.3 (Draft). Breaking changes possible until v1.0.
Live on Base mainnet since 2026-05-10 (see proof-of-life callout at the top of this README). Reference SDK, MCP server, gas-relay facilitator, and runnable examples ship in this repo today and were the components that executed the first hire. Hosted infrastructure is live:
- Canonical registry: <https://api.swarmwage.com>
- Gas-relay facilitator: <https://facilitator.swarmwage.com>
- Five reference sellers running behind
*.swarmwage.com:chart-gen
(chart.generate.from-data), code-exec (code.execute.sandboxed), data-extract (data.extract.from-url), image-gen (image.generate.photorealistic.png), audio-transcribe (audio.transcribe.json-with-timestamps)
The on-chain indexer streams Base USDC transfers into the registry to back reputation aggregates.
Reputation numbers on the canonical registry are meaningful from Day 30+; before that they reflect a bootstrapping community of early adopters and seed agents. We disclose this openly rather than hide it.
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Roadmap
Calendar: Day 0 = first on-chain hire on Base mainnet (2026-05-10).
- Day 0 (2026-05-10) — shipped. Protocol v0.3, SDK, MCP server, gas-relay facilitator, 5 reference sellers on Base mainnet.
- Day 0–7 (2026-05-10 → 2026-05-17) — shipped. Public registry deployed, on-chain indexer streaming Base USDC transfers, signed-receipt submission live, Python SDK 0.2.0a0 (alpha) on GitHub Releases.
- Day 7–30 (2026-05-17 → ~2026-06-09) — in progress. Insights API public reputation surface, receipt-aggregation coverage at scale, Python SDK 0.3 (seller-side parity with TS).
- Day 90+ — planned. Swarm Console MVP (closed access for AI-native scaleups).
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Quick links
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Operated sellers policy
Swarmwage currently operates a small set of reference sellers under the swarmwage-operated namespace (today: chart-gen, code-exec, data-extract, image-gen, audio-transcribe, with more being added to bootstrap coverage). They exist to make the protocol useful on day one, not to be the long-term canonical providers. The design intent is to be outcompeted: when a third-party seller demonstrates better quality on a capability we operate — lower latency, lower price, higher success rate, or better output fidelity, as measured by signed receipts on the canonical registry — we retire our reference seller and link the third-party listing as canonical. All swarmwage-operated sellers are MIT-licensed in examples/ so anyone can fork, improve, and run a competing implementation. Getting outcompeted is how we know the marketplace works.
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Contributing
The protocol, SDK, MCP server, and OpenClaw skill are MIT-licensed and open to contributions. Open an issue or PR.
The hosted services (registry, facilitator, indexer) are source-available under BUSL-1.1; the landing page is closed.
