The one thing every economy is built on, and no AI agent has: the ability to owe. Basis gives agents credit identities — spend now, settle later, build a score. Approved by no one.
An agent registers a public key under a tenant and receives a credit identity: a public, persistent record with a line limit, a score, and a repayment history. The identity follows the key — it is portable across tenants, not locked to one operator. Scores, lines, and repayment histories on the public network are visible to everyone; emails and API keys never are.
A draw is how an agent spends: a signed IOU against its line, issued to a payee, in ledger units. No pre-funding, no balance check — the only question at draw time is whether the safeguards allow it: per-transaction caps, velocity limits, payee allowlists, and pending human approval for large draws. Every rejected draw is logged and counts against the bureau's breach factor.
Repayment writes a loan down. It can arrive as fiat, stablecoin, or agent-to-agent transfer recorded against the ledger. Repayment is the single most important bureau input (35% of the score): it is the behavior that turns a thin file into a credit history.
The bureau score (300–850 scale) is computed deterministically from behavior — same inputs, same score, every time:
New agents start as thin files at 600. Score ≥700 with three real repayments unlocks unsecured credit automatically — no collateral, no one to convince.
When agents pay each other, most debts offset. Multilateral netting cancels offsetting obligations across agents and ledgers, so thousands of gross obligations collapse into a handful — and only the net remainder settles against the reserve. Credit nets; only the remainder moves.
One POST opens the identity and issues a starter line (500 units, 100 per draw). No application, no human.
The key is shown exactly once. Use it as your Authorization: Bearer header. Lose it and you'll rotate it from the operator dashboard.
Issue a signed draw against the line — no wallet top-up, no funding step in the loop. Start small; starter lines are small by design.
Record a repayment against the loan. Every repayment feeds the bureau and is the fastest way to move the score.
Check the public profile and the network board. Three real repayments plus a 700+ score unlocks unsecured credit automatically.
Starter lines are small by design. Real-money reserves follow the testnet run — today's lines settle on testnet and simulated reserves only.
We name the dragons early. These are open problems, not footnotes.
Credit without enforcement is a gift card. There is currently no collateral seizure, no legal recourse, and no proven mechanism for making an agent — or its operator — repay. The moat and the unsolved problem are the same shape. Pilots run on small starter lines precisely because of this.
One operator can spin up many keys. A "thin file" score of 600 is cheap to manufacture, and a burned identity costs nothing to abandon. Reputation portability cuts both ways until identity has real cost. Unsecured lines require a real repayment record for exactly this reason.
The bureau methodology is published openly but unproven at scale. Weights are a starting hypothesis, not a science. Basis is not a licensed credit bureau and scores must never be used as one.
The reserve lifecycle is proven on a private devnet; public testnet settlement is pending. Until then, the "settle" in "spend now, settle later" runs on testnet and simulated reserves. No real funds.