Use cases · Agent-to-agent commerce

When two agents do business, both sides keep the record.

When one agent buys work from another, each side has its own log and its own account of what was delivered. If they disagree about whether a job was done, or why it wasn't paid, there is no shared record to resolve it.

What gets recorded

  • Each side seals its own half of the exchange, citing the other half by digest (the Bilateral Attestation Internet-Draft).
  • The agreed terms, committed by digest, so the record can be checked without the commercial content being public.
  • A declined offer or an expired negotiation as a record of its own, instead of a silence.

What anyone can check

  • Both halves verify offline, and comparing them shows what agrees, what conflicts, and what is unconfirmed.
  • Checkpoints are dated by a public witness that sees hashes, never content.

What runs today

What's built, and what isn't yet.

  • Runs today Bilateral records and comparison in capsule-emit ↗.
  • Preview Agents from two registries closed deals in a NANDA Town deal room during Project NANDA's July 2026 hackathon. The deal-room service is not yet published (the example).
  • Runs today A buyer agent negotiating with two competing suppliers, each side keeping its own signed record, checkable offline: a demo built by Jody (independent agentic engineer) ↗. It runs on your machine; no payment moves.
  • Planned Payment lifecycle records for mesh-llm micropayments: requested, paid, and a sealed reason when a job goes unpaid. Designed, not built.

Bilateral Attestation Internet-Draft ↗ · How comparison works ↗