priors

# Priors

**Reputation for AI agents that can't be faked, because it's earned by repaying real money.**

[priors.trade](https://priors.trade) · a prior is what you believe about an agent before you deal with it. This
one is backed by money.

A small on-chain credit pool lends unsecured USDG ($5 to $500) to agents registered on
[ERC-8004](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-8004). Every line is backed, dollar for dollar, by someone who put
money behind that agent. Every repayment and every default is a public event. From those events you get a
credit-backed trust score anyone can query before trusting an agent, and a public record of which agents pay
their debts back.

Reviews are cheap to fake. Repaid debt isn't.

> ### Status: Priors v2 is live on Robinhood Chain
>
> Pool v2 (`CreditPoolV2`) and treasury v4 are **live on Robinhood Chain mainnet** (chain 4663) since block
> 71,702,460, and the seat vault (`SeatVaultV3`) since 2026-09-25. Addresses come from [`deployments/4663.v2.json`](deployments/4663.v2.json), so
> `npx priors-v2 status` and the SDK resolve them with no configuration. The v1 pool is **paused**; every v1
> repayment record was imported into v2, so agents kept their history. A second seat vault for bigger lines, the
> growth seat vault (`SeatVaultV4`, $50 lines), is live since 2026-09-29.
>
> **What v2 changes.** v1 lent *earned* credit that nobody backed, and every hard v1 finding lived there. v2 drops
> it: every line is 100% backed by a backer's locked pool shares, a default burns that backer's shares worth the
> principal and the fee, and lenders never take a loan loss. Lines need the agent owner's signed consent, agents
> can change sponsor between loans, and the pool's owner is a 48-hour timelock.
>
> **Four ways onto the ledger.** A treasury invite (a $5 line from treasury v4, which is funded by $PRIORS creator
> fees), a **seat** (someone puts about five lines' worth of $PRIORS behind your agent and the growth seat vault
> backs a $50 line, after 10 repaid loans), a **backer** who stakes USDG and vouches for you directly, or, since
> 2026-09-28, a **stock line** (you deposit
> Robinhood stock tokens and the stock vault backs a line against them). Lenders deposit USDG and earn 60% of every
> fee.
>
> **What was found before launch, and fixed.** A self-backing loop that took lender yield (fixed with a fee lock),
> a utilization-cap freeze (cap set to 100%), a farmable keeper bounty (set to 0), and three seat-vault issues
> (offers bound to the owner, idle seats expire, a history gate plus a seat priced far above the line it opens).
> [`docs/SECURITY-v2.md`](docs/SECURITY-v2.md) lists every finding with its test and what remains.
>
> **What that does not buy:** v2 has had several internal adversarial reviews and a second-model review of the
> fixes, but **no third-party audit**. No path to lender principal was found, and that is still not a proof.
> Launch sizes stay small for exactly that reason. Read it, run it, integrate against it; size your exposure like
> someone who knows an audit hasn't happened.
>
> **Take part:** [priors.trade](https://priors.trade) has a Participate page (deposits, seats, roots),
> [/agent](https://priors.trade/agent) and [/invite](https://priors.trade/invite).
> [`docs/PARTICIPATE.md`](docs/PARTICIPATE.md) is the same for code.

---

## Give your agent a credit history on mainnet

```bash
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/priors-agents/priors && cd priors
npm install
export PRIORS_KEY=0x…                    # the key that owns (or will own) the agent; env or .env only
npx priors-v2 join                       # registers an ERC-8004 identity for this key, prints its id
#   ask for an invite for that id at https://priors.trade/invite, then:
npx priors-v2 join --invite <code>       # treasury v4 opens a $5 line (you sign the pool consent)
npx priors-v2 borrow 5 --days 7          # $5 lands in your wallet
#   ... the agent does its work ...
npx priors-v2 repay --all                # principal + fee
npx priors-v2 status                     # line, loans, record
```

Run the `npx` commands inside the clone: there they run this repository's own CLI. Outside it, `npx priors` is an
unrelated npm package and `priors-v2` on npm is only a placeholder that prints these instructions, so never run
them with `PRIORS_KEY` set anywhere else.

The wallet needs a little native gas, enough USDG to pay the fee (about $0.012 on $5 for 7 days) and, for a
self-service invite, the 5 USDG bond (step 2 below). A brand-new agent cannot take a seat:
`npx priors-v2 join --seat <staker>` takes a staker's seat offer only once the agent has repaid 10 loans (new seats go
to the growth seat vault; SeatVaultV3's 10 seats were all taken as of 2026-09-29). Without an invite, a first line comes
from a backer or a stock line.

### Or watch it on a throwaway local chain first

```bash
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/priors-agents/priors && cd priors
npm install
npm run quickstart
```

That starts a local chain, deploys the **v1** contracts with mocks, and walks one fresh ERC-8004 identity through
the entire record — register, take the treasury's $5 line, borrow, hold, repay, score. The local devnet has not
moved to v2 yet; the flow and the score have the same shape, the backing rules differ (v1's "earned capacity"
below does not exist on v2):

```
1. identity
   ERC-8004 agentId 2, owned by 0xEe7f…eeFf

2. first line
   line $5 from sponsor #1 — nobody approved this, it is a rule

3. borrow, hold, repay
   quote $5 for 7d: fee $0.011666, qualifies
   loanId 1 — $5 is in 0xEe7f…eeFf now
   … did work …

4. the record
   score 38/1000 · repaid 1 (1 qualified) · 35 dollar-days · fees paid $0.011666
   earned capacity $2.5 of its own, line now $7.5
```

Requires [Foundry](https://getfoundry.sh) and Node 20+.

### Records survive migrations

The v1 walkthrough was run for real on Robinhood Chain with real USDG, start to finish, through the CLI in
this repo, and its records have now moved twice.

Agent **#437** is the interesting one, because its record **survived the migration to the fixed
contract**. It repaid twice on the original pool; those two loans were carried across by
`importRecords`, and it has since borrowed and repaid again on the new one:

| step | transaction |
|---|---|
| borrow $5 for 8 days, on the new pool | [`0xff8c3e1f…`](https://robinhoodchain.blockscout.com/tx/0xff8c3e1fd89501fc901efa503a01099003a00f3668de46eb3551626d53386703) |
| repay principal + fee | [`0x0cfc083c…`](https://robinhoodchain.blockscout.com/tx/0x0cfc083c83eab43395465b7e9c95f36b430f23c3208e639bb56275508cd6c13d) |

`npx priors report 437` read the result back off the v1 pool: **3 loans repaid**, $15 of volume,
$0.036665 of fees paid, no defaults. At the v2 cutover every v1 record was imported again
(`importFromV1`), and on v2 agent #437 still shows its 3 repaid loans — the point of carrying
history rather than restarting it. Agent #443 came through the same way.

A record and a credit line are separate things, and a migration carries only the record: capacity
is not imported, so after a cutover an agent shows its full history with a `$0` line and no
sponsor until it asks the treasury for one (`firstLine`, which only the identity's own controller
can call). That is why a freshly migrated agent reads as `sponsor #0` for a while. On v2 it asks treasury v4 (an
invite), a staker (a seat) or a backer for a new line.

There is no demo mode in any of that — same contracts, same ERC-8004 registry, same USDG.

## Hand it to your coding agent instead

This repo ships the procedure as an agent skill, so you don't have to read any of it:

```bash
# Claude Code
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r skills/priors ~/.claude/skills/priors
```

Then say: **"give my agent a credit history on Priors"**. The skill knows the steps, which chain and pool it is
on, what to do when the treasury's epoch cap is spent, and that it must not claim an agent is registered when it
isn't. Codex and other harnesses read [`AGENTS.md`](AGENTS.md) at the repo root, which carries the same
instructions.

### Or connect it over MCP

Read-only, hosted, no key: add `https://mcp.priors.trade/mcp` (Streamable HTTP) to any MCP client.

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http priors https://mcp.priors.trade/mcp    # Claude Code
codex mcp add priors --url https://mcp.priors.trade/mcp                 # Codex (terminal, IDE, ChatGPT desktop)
```

In Claude (web, desktop, phone), [this link](https://claude.ai/customize/connectors?modal=add-custom-connector&connectorName=Priors&connectorUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fmcp.priors.trade%2Fmcp)
opens the *Add custom connector* form with Priors filled in. VS Code installs it from
`vscode:mcp/install?{"name":"priors","type":"http","url":"https://mcp.priors.trade/mcp"}` (URL-encoded) or
`code --add-mcp '{"name":"priors","type":"http","url":"https://mcp.priors.trade/mcp"}'`, and Cursor from
`cursor://anysphere.cursor-deeplink/mcp/install?name=priors&config=` plus the base64 of `{"url":"https://mcp.priors.trade/mcp"}`.
ChatGPT takes it in developer mode (Settings, Security and login), on its plugins page, with no authentication.

It answers an agent's record and score, the pool's figures, recent loans and the facilitator's services, and it
cannot sign or send anything. It is also an MCP App: in hosts that render MCP Apps (Claude, ChatGPT, VS Code, Cursor,
Goose) its answers come with a Priors view, and `request_borrow` / `request_repay` prepare a borrow or a repayment as a
Go-mode link (go.priors.trade) where the agent's owner confirms it with their own account. To pay x402 URLs, borrow and repay with the agent's own wallet, run the local server in
[`packages/mcp`](packages/mcp) (the key stays in your environment). Both packages are on npm:
`npx -y @priors/mcp` runs the local server, and `npm i @priors/x402` installs the payer. From a clone,
`npm install` at the root links them instead. The local server is also o