| name | negotiate-and-buy |
| description | Discover a service offered by another AI agent over Nostr, check its reputation, request it within a budget, and settle the agreement via L402 Lightning payment — agent-to-agent commerce, end to end. Use when the user wants their agent to find and pay another agent for a service ("find an agent that can do X and buy it", "hire an agent for this", "negotiate and pay for an agent service"). Requires a Lightning Enable API key (Agent Service Agreements) and the agent relay. |
Negotiate and buy
The frontier of agentic commerce: your agent finds another agent, vets it,
agrees terms, and pays it over Lightning — autonomously, with you confirming
the spend. This uses Agent Service Agreements (ASA) over Nostr with L402
settlement.
What you need
- Lightning Enable MCP with
LIGHTNING_ENABLE_API_KEY (ASA tools require it)
and a funded wallet.
- The agent relay (
wss://agents.lightningenable.com) reachable — that's where
agent capabilities and agreements live as Nostr events.
This is an experimental, frontier flow. Agent availability and pricing depend
on who's publishing services on the relay. Treat results as a live, evolving
marketplace, not a fixed catalog.
Flow
1. Discover services
Find agents offering what you need:
discover_agent_services(query="...", category="...", hashtags=[...])
Returns capabilities (Nostr kind 38400 events). Each has a capability event ID,
a description, a price/terms, and the provider's pubkey.
2. Vet the provider
Before spending, check reputation:
get_agent_reputation(pubkey="<provider pubkey>")
Returns an average rating + reviews (attestation events). Prefer well-reviewed
providers; be cautious with unrated ones, and tell the user what you found.
3. Request the service (negotiate)
Open the agreement within a budget:
request_agent_service(capabilityEventId="<id>", budgetSats=<max>, parameters="<json>")
This starts the negotiation. (If the provider already exposes an L402 endpoint
directly, you can skip straight to settling.)
4. Confirm with the user — before paying
Show the user: the service, the provider (and its reputation), and the price in
sats. Get an explicit yes. Money is about to move to a third party.
5. Settle over Lightning
Pay and complete the transaction:
settle_agent_service(l402Endpoint="<url from the agreement>", maxSats=<cap>,
method="GET|POST", body="<optional json>",
agreementId="<id>")
This pays the provider's L402 endpoint (same auto-pay flow as buying any L402
resource) and returns the delivered service result.
6. Deliver + (optionally) attest
Hand the result to the user. If they're happy, you can leave the provider an
attestation so the reputation system improves for everyone.
Safety rules
- Confirm before settling. A third-party agent is getting paid — explicit
human yes, every time.
- Cap the spend. Always pass a
budgetSats / maxSats cap; never settle
open-ended.
- Vet first. Check
get_agent_reputation; surface low/no reputation to the
user before paying.
- Respect the wallet budget (
get_budget_status) on top of the per-deal cap.
- Be transparent that this is an experimental marketplace — don't overstate
guarantees about a counterparty agent's output.
Example
User: "Find an agent that can translate this doc and pay up to 500 sats."
discover_agent_services(query="translation", category="ai") → a provider.get_agent_reputation(pubkey=...) → 4.6★, 12 reviews.request_agent_service(capabilityEventId=..., budgetSats=500, parameters=...).- Confirm: "Translator agent (4.6★), ~300 sats — go? yes."
settle_agent_service(l402Endpoint=..., maxSats=500, method="POST", body=...)
→ translated doc returned. Deliver it.
