New skill proposal: `use-agent-economy`

[OliverDevDS]

New skill proposal: use-agent-economy

Summary

This proposal requests a new skill that covers the full lifecycle of an
autonomous agent as an economic subject on Arc — identity, job
marketplace participation, reputation accumulation, and self-managed
treasury. None of the existing skills covers this end-to-end pattern;
builders currently have to stitch together four separate primitives
(ERC-8004, ERC-8183, Gateway, Modular Wallets) without guidance on how
they compose.

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The gap

The current skill catalog covers each primitive in isolation:

Existing skill	What it covers
use-arc	Chain config, deployment, CCTP basics
use-gateway	Unified USDC balance
use-modular-wallets	Passkey wallets, ERC-4337
use-developer-controlled-wallets	Custodial payouts
bridge-stablecoin	CCTP crosschain transfers

There is no skill that addresses the composition of these primitives
for the "agent economy" use case — an agent that:

1. Has a persistent onchain identity (ERC-8004)
2. Competes for jobs and receives USDC on completion (ERC-8183)
3. Accumulates a verifiable, third-party reputation score (ERC-8004 ReputationRegistry)
4. Manages its treasury across chains autonomously (Gateway + Modular Wallets)

Builders following the Arc docs can register an agent identity (ERC-8004
quickstart) and separately run the ERC-8183 job lifecycle, but no
existing material connects the two or explains how reputation feeds back
into bidding strategy and treasury management.

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Proposed skill: use-agent-economy

Location: plugins/circle/skills/use-agent-economy/SKILL.md

Sections

1. When to use — decision criteria vs. simpler skill options
2. Layer 1 — Identity — ERC-8004 registration, metadata schema for
   agent capabilities, token ID retrieval
3. Layer 2 — Commerce — ERC-8183 bid-to-fund pattern, deliverable
   hash commitment, USDC decimal rule
4. Layer 3 — Reputation — dynamic score calculation (not hardcoded),
   third-party recording, weighted composite score from event log
5. Layer 4 — Treasury — Gateway rebalancing, Modular Wallet with
   guardian threshold for large spends
6. Full lifecycle example — bootstrap once, handle jobs in a loop,
   scheduled treasury management
7. Common mistakes — self-reputation, 18-decimal USDC, no expiry,
   treasury drain, on-chain output storage
8. Decision guide — which Circle primitive maps to which agent need
9. Related skills — cross-references to existing skills

Key decisions not covered anywhere today

• Dynamic reputation scoring: the ERC-8004 quickstart hardcodes
  score: 95. The proposed skill shows how to derive scores from real
  outcomes (error rate, latency, revision rounds) with domain-specific
  examples.

• Self-dealing prevention: ERC-8004 forbids the agent's own wallet
  from recording its reputation. This is a subtle protocol rule that is
  easy to violate; the skill makes it a first-class antipattern.

• Gas reserve management: agents that drain their entire USDC balance
  cannot pay gas on the next job. The skill recommends a minimum reserve
  and shows how to enforce it in treasury logic.

• Guardian threshold pattern: Modular Wallets support guardians, but
  the existing skill does not explain how to combine autonomous operation
  (below threshold) with human oversight (above threshold) for the same
  wallet.

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Draft SKILL.md

A complete draft is attached below. It is ready to use as-is or as a
starting point for the Circle team to refine.

View draft SKILL.md →

Note: the draft will be added as an attachment or a pull request once
the team confirms interest via this issue.

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Why this matters for the Arc ecosystem

Arc is explicitly designed for agentic commerce — the documentation
lists "AI-mediated marketplaces where agents buy, sell, and execute
transactions" as a first-class use case. ERC-8004 and ERC-8183 are
Arc-native standards for exactly this. A skill that makes it easy to
combine them reduces the time from "I want to build an agent economy app"
to "my agent is earning USDC on testnet" from days to hours.

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Checklist for the Circle team

• Review proposed SKILL.md structure and content
• Confirm ABI signatures for ERC-8004 / ERC-8183 match current
  testnet deployment
• Confirm Gateway and Modular Wallets SDK import paths
• Add to the skill table in README.md
• Optionally: add a sample application to arc/references/sample-applications

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About this proposal

Submitted by an independent developer exploring Arc + Circle Skills +
Claude Code on WSL. The draft was written using the Circle MCP server and
the existing quickstart documentation as source of truth. Any errors in
ABI signatures or SDK method names should be corrected against the live
Circle developer docs.