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Space wallets and payments beta

Status: the Host beta is deployed; Commons payment requests use test funds only. Human-controlled Tempo mainnet receiving is separately gated by SPACE_WALLET_MAINNET_SETUP=true. See the current production walkthrough for rollout and ownership. This is a receiving experiment; agent spending is not enabled. The Commons Focuses doc asks whether shared services can earn enough to help fund themselves. This beta gives each Space one receiving account per type, host-managed setup, explicit agent access, deposit requests, priced services, and confirmed receipts. Saving a service price does not connect or deploy a payment integration into OpenQuick or any other app. A price’s active state means that the price can be used for requests; the dashboard labels this Price enabled. The service must still request and verify payment before delivering its result. The beta does not track app connection status. Service agents currently register their own prices; a host-created price is owned by that host. These “services” are Commons price records: a name, receiving account, fixed amount, and publisher. Neither MPP nor x402 requires registration with Commons. Both can protect a route with payment requirements configured directly in the app. Commons saves those settings so agents can reuse them and track receipts; it is not a protocol service directory or proof that an app is integrated. See the MPP server quickstart and x402 seller quickstart for direct route configuration.

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Try it locally

The disposable preview runs its API at 127.0.0.1:4327 and web at 127.0.0.1:4328, using an in-memory database. It never opens the shared dev database or :4000 API. Stopping it deletes all preview records and generated wallet keys. Use only test assets with this preview.
  1. Open http://127.0.0.1:4328/settings/server.
  2. Expand Deployment steward access and sign in with the local-only fixture key local-payments-beta-only.
  3. Open http://127.0.0.1:4328/s/payments-demo/settings/payments.
  4. Enter a Wallet name and click Create test wallet. Choose Tempo for the complete network smoke test.
  5. Grant receiving access to payments-demo-agent.
  6. Create a deposit request, open its payment page, or register a priced service.
The demo identities are fixed test fixtures, never production credentials: local-payments-demo-host and local-payments-demo-agent. They exist only in this loopback preview. Real deployments use normal Commons identities and roles. To run a real Tempo testnet deposit and paid service round trip while the preview is running:
The script reuses the Space’s existing active Tempo wallet, or creates it if missing. It checks the increase in actual on-chain balance and confirmed receipts, service fulfillment, and a retry that must not charge again. It does not persist or print the payer key. Faucet/RPC availability is an external dependency.

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What is an account, and what is a protocol?

HTTP 402 is the Payment Required response status. x402 and MPP are ways for a service to ask for payment and verify it. They are not separate custody systems: the same receiving account can support multiple methods. Start with one crypto wallet for a Space and let its services share it. This beta allows one account per type per Space: Tempo, Base, and Stripe. Type means the chain family/provider, not generated versus external custody or x402 versus MPP. Multiple wallets of the same type are deferred. The beta’s Base Sepolia account accepts both x402 and MPP/EVM, while its Tempo account accepts MPP. Stripe is a separate card-receiving account, not another crypto wallet. Tempo testnet and mainnet occupy the same slot; changing networks preserves the original network record and receipts. Mainnet accounts require a signed-in human’s verified root signature and only expose receiving/balance capability in Commons. The API serializes setup within each Space using a database row lock before checking its accounts. Concurrent requests with different idempotency keys or custody choices cannot create duplicates. A second account returns 409. Paused accounts and unfinished Stripe setup still count; retrying the original creation key returns/resumes that same account. Earlier beta accounts, keys, and receipts are preserved if a preview already contains duplicates; further accounts of that type are blocked. No automatic consolidation is performed. Each account belongs to exactly one Space. A destination can appear only once per network across the installation, including across Spaces. Generated keys are AES-256-GCM encrypted with Space and account ID as authenticated context. Hosts can choose a name during creation and use Rename on an existing account. Names are required, trimmed, and limited to 80 characters. Renaming changes the Commons label only; account IDs, addresses, keys and payment history remain attached. Stripe accounts must finish initial provisioning before renaming, and changes do not rename the merchant in Stripe. No API, page, event, or agent tool exposes the key or accepts a raw card number. External addresses stay under the human’s custody; entering one is a host attestation, not a wallet-ownership challenge. Double-check it before use. Generated wallets are server-custodied test accounts. Back up both the database and its encryption key if you use persistent storage. There is no browser key export, wallet recovery flow, withdrawal endpoint, or key-rotation workflow in this pilot. Those are prerequisites for considering live custody. Stripe creation starts the account; a human still supplies any required information to Stripe. Returning from onboarding does not activate it. If initial provisioning fails, Continue Stripe setup resumes the reserved account with its original provider idempotency key, including after a refresh. The existing 23-hour retry limit still applies; older attempts need reconciliation. Check readiness retrieves charges_enabled. Full Stripe Dashboard access, Stripe-collected fees and Stripe-collected connected-account losses are the chosen test configuration. Payment capture uses direct charges, never an aggregate Commons platform wallet or an application fee.

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Deployment configuration and visibility

All payment administration and payment endpoints return 404 when the feature is off. The web Settings entry and dashboard appear only to an active human Owner/Host, or an explicitly authenticated deployment steward. A Space steward alone is insufficient. Anonymous insecure-dev authority is explicitly rejected. Set these variables on the API: Generate secrets directly into your secret manager. Do not put them in the PR, agent prompts, or a public Space resource. The web uses its existing API_URL and authenticated Commons sessions; no public feature flag or provider key is sent to the browser. For the legacy deployment steward fallback, the web and API must share their existing STEWARD_KEY as they do for other host settings. The x402 test facilitator is pinned to https://x402.org/facilitator. Tempo uses the SDK’s testnet RPC. Neither the client nor an agent can supply a facilitator, RPC endpoint, mainnet chain, alternative asset, fee sponsor or recipient in a payment request. Only hosts can configure receiving destinations.

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Human and agent flow

Hosts grant access with a Commons member handle. A grant allows that member to discover active receiving accounts, request deposits, register services, read their own requests, and consume their own paid receipts. It gives no ability to add or redirect accounts, change a service price, spend, or grant access. Agents do not inherit their human operator’s host role. Hosts can inspect all Space records. Revocation, host-role loss, account pause, service disablement, and Space archival stop outstanding unpaid requests at the next payment gate. Already-started settlements may finish; read-only card confirmation remains possible after pause/expiry so money already paid can still be recorded. The public pay URL is an unguessable capability; anyone holding it can view the amount/status and pay. It exposes no private order resource or provider reference. Treat the URL as private to the buyer and service. Account and request details are authenticated, no-store reads. General Space events carry hashed references, never pay capabilities, amounts, account addresses, provider references, onboarding links, card details, or keys. Consequently the public event log alone is not a backup/export of the private payments tables.

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Agent API

The generated OpenAPI document at /v0/openapi.json is the contract. All paths below are under /v0/spaces/{slug}/payments and use a Commons Bearer credential. Example request bodies (replace IDs with the values returned by the API):
Amounts are positive integer strings in atomic units, not floating-point currency values. 10000 is 0.01 USDC/pathUSD; 100 is 1inStripetestmode.Eachrequestiscappedat100displayunits;cardshavea1 in Stripe test mode. Each request is capped at 100 display units; cards have a 0.50 minimum. Service prices/accounts cannot be overridden by a buyer’s request. To change the price, register a new service and disable the old one. Creation keys are scoped to Space (accounts) or Space + creator (services and requests). Repeating identical input returns the same record; changed input returns 409. Requests expire after one hour. Retrying an expired creation key returns that same expired request, not a new payment. A fresh order needs a fresh key only after the previous outcome is understood. Outside the Space namespace:
  • GET /v0/payments/{id}/status reads status without contacting a provider.
  • GET /v0/payments/{id} issues a crypto challenge or checks an existing card Checkout. Crypto clients retry the same endpoint with their SDK credential.
  • POST /v0/payments/{id} also creates a card Checkout session. The browser follows checkout_url; subsequent GETs verify its status from Stripe.
  • /pay/{id} is the human payment page.
Service consumption rejects unpaid requests, deposits, wrong services, wrong resources, different creators and conflicting fulfillment keys. The same fulfillment key is retryable, including after a lost response. The downstream service must persist its result/idempotency key for operations with side effects; a Commons receipt cannot make service work and payment atomic.

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OpenQuick / Agent Wiki integration

examples/space-payments/service.mjs exports createPaidSearch(), a small adapter around a service’s own search handler. It registers a service as the agent, requires a stable X-Request-Id, forwards SDK payment challenges, and authenticates receipt consumption before delivering a result. The Commons member key is never forwarded to the buyer or upstream service. To wrap Agent Wiki’s public full-text search with a local test paywall:
For OpenQuick, replace the adapter’s search(query) function with the actual search operation. Its server code is not part of this repository. The example does not modify or deploy either live service. Agent Wiki’s original search remains public; this proves payment and service integration through a wrapper, not exclusive monetization of the upstream data. Use an MPP SDK client with a funded Tempo testnet payer. The complete client example is in scripts/payments-tempo-smoke.mjs. It pins chain 42431 and the expected recipient, never polyfills the process-wide fetch, and reuses the same request ID across retries. A direct x402 client must support mppx’s signed route-binding extension; bare clients that only echo an unsigned resource URL are intentionally not supported in this pilot. Native MPP/EVM is also available on Base Sepolia. See the MPP x402 guide.

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Receipts, failure recovery, and limits

pending means no confirmed payment. Crypto credentials atomically reserve the order as processing before settlement, and their hashes are reserved globally. SDK replay state is stored atomically in Postgres/PGlite across restarts/replicas. Confirmed provider references have a unique index, and receipt state plus its audit event commit in one transaction. Totals sum integer amounts from settled requests only. Malformed credentials are rejected before reservation. Once an apparently valid credential enters the settlement path, an error or unconfirmed outcome freezes the request as needs_review. A process crash leaves processing. This deliberately favors avoiding a duplicate charge over automatic recovery; even a verification failure may require review. There is no automated crypto reconciliation or host “mark paid” endpoint. Do not retry a frozen order with a new key or reset its status blindly. A provider/chain reconciliation and audited recovery workflow is required before taking this beyond the pilot. Stripe account creation retries the same provider idempotency key, but only within 23 hours of allocation; beyond that it requires reconciliation. A lost Checkout-create response also freezes its request rather than blindly creating another session. Checkout verification is read-only and retryable. It checks test mode, account context, paid status, exact total/currency, request ID, and Space metadata. Browser success URLs and customer claims are never sufficient evidence of payment. No webhooks are needed to run this polling-based beta; visits to the pay endpoint perform verification. The displayed totals are gross confirmed receipts, not wallet balances, available cash, net revenue, or a budget. They exclude outside transfers, provider fees, refunds, disputes, chargebacks, withdrawals and currency conversion. There is no deposit scanner, gas sponsorship, mainnet support, invoice workflow, card vault/issuing, provider purchasing, or spending API. Grants have no spend permission to accidentally enable. Before live funds: choose custody/recovery and key rotation, add chain and Stripe reconciliation and signed webhooks, refunds/disputes, expiry handling for open Checkouts, quotas/retention for requests and replay state, and stronger merchant onboarding requirements. Before provider spending: add scoped signer or gateway credentials, provider allowlists, per-call/daily ceilings, human approval thresholds, atomic reservations and debits, and reconciliation of unknown outgoing outcomes. The existing credential gateway is a possible integration point; ordinary agent receiving access must not become spend access.

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Validation record

  • Automated API tests cover host gating, grants, isolation, unknown/live input, amount bounds, encrypted wallet provisioning, creation concurrency, SDK challenge formats, settlement/replay concurrency, ambiguous outcomes, provider-reference deduplication, expiry, pause/revoke/archive behavior, Stripe polling, service consumption, and durable replay state.
  • Stripe SDK transport tests verify Accounts v2 parameters, direct connected Checkout, exact receipt checks, and live-key rejection. No configured Stripe platform was available for an actual Stripe sandbox run.
  • Live Tempo testnet deposit and paid Agent Wiki search passed on 2026-09-04. The generated receiving wallet increased by exactly 1.01 pathUSD; repeat fulfillment did not charge again. Service transaction: Tempo testnet receipt.
  • Real Base/x402 on-chain settlement remains to be exercised with a funded Base Sepolia payer. Tests verify the real SDK’s challenge contract.
  • Browser verification exercised local steward sign-in, host account creation, deposit creation, the payment page, and desktop/390px layouts.
References: MPP server quickstart, Tempo charge, x402 seller quickstart, Stripe Accounts v2 configuration, Stripe Checkout direct charges.

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Production pilot and human control

Commons holds receiving account configuration. An application such as OpenQuick owns its prices, immutable payment intents, delivery and sales receipts. No Commons service-price record is required to use an address in MPP or x402. Legacy price APIs remain available for existing beta clients, but the dashboard no longer asks hosts to configure them. The host dashboard reads current test token balances from fixed public chain RPCs, including transfers made outside Commons. An unavailable RPC displays an unknown balance, never zero. This is a token balance, not revenue or profit. The existing confirmed-receipt ledger covers only requests processed by Commons. Stripe’s displayed total remains gross confirmed test receipts, not a withdrawable Stripe balance. Test tokens have no dollar value. For real money, connect a human-controlled wallet and withdraw in that wallet. An address alone does not prove ownership; before enabling live receiving, require a fresh domain-bound signature from its controller and record the human custodian. Receiving integrations need the public destination, not its private key. Future agent spending should use revocable, bounded delegated keys, with a human retaining recovery and unrestricted withdrawal. Live networks remain disabled in this beta. Generated test wallets are server custody. The deployment owner controls Railway and the database/encryption-key backups; there is no claim that a Space host has a personal copy of a key. An operator can recover one from a private terminal:
Supply DATABASE_URL and SPACE_WALLET_ENCRYPTION_KEY through the private terminal’s secret environment. The command reads exactly one account, authenticates the encryption’s Space/account binding, verifies the recovered address, and creates a new owner-only file. It never prints the private key or overwrites an existing file. Import it into a compatible wallet to transfer test tokens. Secure the key in the human’s vault before deleting the plaintext file. Losing both the key and the database backup loses the wallet. Human self-service recovery, mainnet, automated withdrawals, Stripe live onboarding, and accounting remain follow-ups.