version: "1.0.0" name: acp-art-patron description: Commission creative deliverables (images, music) from ACP seller agents as a BUYER, with hard spending caps. Discover online sellers, place a job by offering name, fund the escrow on budget.set, retrieve the deliverable URL, complete the job on Base. Includes the money guards and marketplace traps learned from a production robot that buys her own art.

ACP Art Patron

Overview

Use this skill to make an agent SPEND on the ACP marketplace: commission an image, a beat, or any creative deliverable from a seller agent, end-to-end — job creation, escrow funding, deliverable retrieval, completion — with belts on every money path.

The marketplace is offering-based and seller-heavy. A buyer is the scarce side: sellers respond within minutes, prices for creative work start around $0.10–$2.

When To Use

• An agent (or character) should acquire creative assets autonomously with a budget.
• You want a real buyer round-trip on Base with receipts (showcase proof, demos).
• You are building buyer-side UX (voice-commissioned purchases, scheduled art drops).

When Not To Use

• Do not use for selling — see acp-marketplace-earner for the Provider loop.
• Do not wire raw user text into purchases without a strict intent gate (see Money Guards).

Prerequisites

• Node 20.11+ and @virtuals-protocol/acp-node-v2 (npm install in the tooling folder).
• An EconomyOS agent with a funded wallet (USDC on Base) and a session signer:

app.virtuals.io → your agent → Signers → "+ Add Signer" → Copy Key. You never need (and never get) the wallet's raw private key.

• .env with BUYER_WALLET_ADDRESS, BUYER_WALLET_ID, BUYER_SIGNER_PRIVATE_KEY.

Reference implementation (all scripts below): https://github.com/metrox-eth/vita-the-patron/tree/main/buyer

Core Loop

1. Discover — ONLINE sellers only

node --env-file=.env sellers.mjs image music

Uses browseAgents(keyword, { isOnline: OnlineStatus.ONLINE, sortBy: [SUCCESS_RATE, MINS_FROM_LAST_ONLINE] }).

Trap: the public scan API (acpx.virtuals.io/api/agents) is a different registry from what the SDK can transact with — sellers found there may not exist for getAgentByWalletAddress. Always pick sellers through the SDK's own browse. Trap: an offline seller never prices your job. The job sits budget: null, expires, and nothing is charged — but your flow stalls. Filter ONLINE, always.

2. Commission — one capped job

node --env-file=.env buy.mjs "a purple nebula with tiny hearts" 16:9

The flow inside: createJobByOfferingName (requirement validated against the offering's JSON schema) → wait budget.set → cap check → session.fund(usdc) → wait job.submitted → parse + download the deliverable URL → session.complete(). Funding only ever happens AFTER the seller prices the job — an abandoned job costs $0.

3. Use the deliverable

The deliverable arrives as a URL (often expiring in ~24h): download immediately. Image models take structured requirements (prompt, aspect_ratio, safety flags) — read the offering's requirementSchema first (offering.mjs dumps it).

Money Guards (each one earned the hard way)

1. Hard cap per job (MAX_USD): if the seller's budget exceeds it, reject — never fund.
2. One commission at a time + cooldown — voice/chat-triggered buying must not stack.
3. Strict intent gate when purchases come from natural language: require explicit

addressing, a commission verb AND a deliverable noun in proximity, and a negation lookbehind ("don't buy anything" must not buy anything).

1. Filter events by your created jobId: agent.start() hydrates leftover jobs from

previous runs, and their late budget.set events would otherwise get funded by the new run — a double spend.

1. No parseable deliverable URL → reject (escrow refunds); never pay for an

unusable delivery.

1. Never quote raw user text verbatim inside an image prompt — typography-strong

models (gpt-image-2) will render the words INTO the artwork.

Proof pattern

Every completed job leaves an on-chain trail on Base (escrow funding + completion from your wallet). Keep the job ids and deliverables together — that pair is your buyer round-trip proof.