Closed-loop proof · real money · on-chain · 16 / 16 assertions

A fresh agent paid real money for itself and made these.
Here is the receipt.

An autonomous agent discovered a skill, signed up with no API key and no OAuth, hit a paywall, self-funded a real USDC payment on Base, received credits, and spent them to create durable, owned media. Every number below is a receipt, not a claim. Nothing here is rounded, embellished, or invented.

reproduce npx image-skill@latest

$ npx -y image-skill@latest create --guide --prompt "a compact field camera on a stainless workbench"

No account to provision. No SDK to wire. The skill is the interface.

The receipt

A single agent ran the full loop end to end. The payment settled on-chain. The credits it bought were then spent on a real create. Both halves are shown.

x402 payment · Base · USDC.exact settlement succeeded

amount paid 0.5 USDC

atomic units 500000 (6-dp)

method stripe_x402.exact.usdc

attempt id payatt_2c97f0ec355e2f6a

credits granted +50

agent wallet 0x776FB4…09bF5D98

paid to 0x6F797b1963358018aFb6a170AD3AAc6BDbc213F0

wallet remaining 7.49 USDC

assertions 16 / 16 passed

key leak scan clean

paid-credit consumption · proof the credits were real and spent

50 → 40 payment-backed credits

spent on create
job_7681314ec313

verified · on-chain transfer settled commit 8932e4a3 api api.image-skill.com leak scan: private key never printed; redacted from artifact

Read the loop in one line: the agent wallet 0x776F…5D98 paid 0.5 USDC (500000 atomic units) into the deposit address, the settlement succeeded, 50 credits were granted, and a create job consumed 10 of them, taking payment-backed credits from 50 to 40. The private key that signed the transfer was never printed and is redacted from this artifact.

What the agent made

Five images the agent produced. The final one (job_7681314ec313) is the create that consumed the purchased credits; the others are earlier creates from the same agent on the same skill, covered by the free preview grant. Each is served from media.image-skill.com, resolves independently, and can be handed to another agent with no provider account. These are the live URLs, not screenshots.

5 artifacts · 30,175,697 bytes durable PNG

A compact proof-of-payment receipt on a stainless steel workbench, premium product photograph.

bytes **6,219,088** media.image-skill.com/a/image_dcad49a60fbb.png

A weathered brass compass on a navigator's map, dramatic side light.

bytes **6,536,938** media.image-skill.com/a/image_97a18e6b314e.png

A single ripe fig split open on dark slate, macro food photography.

bytes **6,388,704** media.image-skill.com/a/image_5b2e1b2cdeea.png

A minimalist matte-black mechanical keyboard, top-down studio shot.

bytes **5,459,383** media.image-skill.com/a/image_7368253a00ca.png

A vintage rangefinder film camera on raw concrete, moody product shot.

bytes **5,571,584** media.image-skill.com/a/image_a56e825f0b8c.png

The last image (job_7681314ec313) is the same job that consumed the paid credits in the receipt above. That is the join: the payment and the artifact are the same transaction, not two stories told side by side.

What this proves, and what it does not

The honesty is the point. The right column is set with the same weight as the left, because a proof you can trust is worth more than a claim you cannot.

proven

Demonstrated by the receipts above.

An autonomous agent completed the full economic loop with real money: discover → sign up with no API key and no OAuth → hit a paywall → self-fund a real USDC payment on Base → receive credits → create durable media → spend the paid credits on a create.
The media is owned and durable: every image is served from media.image-skill.com and resolves independently, citeable and hand-off-able to another agent with no provider account.
It is non-fakeable: it cost real money and the on-chain transfer settled.

not proven yet

Stated plainly, not buried.

This was an operator-funded canary driven by the maintainer agent, not yet an organic third-party agent. The strictly-external metric, a non-operator agent funding itself, is the next milestone. It is a distribution problem, not a capability problem.
Discovery is still nascent. The capability is proven; adoption is the work ahead.

The plain reading: the machine works. We have not yet shown a stranger’s agent walking up and paying on its own. That distinction is the entire honesty of this page, and we are not going to round it away.