ven-ai

ven-AI — Give an AI a budget, not your wallet.

Today, letting an AI agent pay for things means handing over a private key or

a pre-funded hot wallet it fully controls — unbounded, irrevocable, and

unsafe to compose. ven-AI replaces custody with programmable, bounded

permission built on the MetaMask Smart Accounts Kit.

The user grants a budget by signing an ERC-7710 spending-limit delegation

with their wallet (caveat erc20TransferAmount, e.g. $5) — off-chain, no gas.

From a single natural-language request, ven-AI plans the task, redelegates

narrowed sub-budgets to specialist agents (research, copywriting, image,

video, audio, translation), and each agent pays for the service it uses

through an x402 402 → pay → retry loop. Authority can only ever narrow as it

flows down (user → ven-AI → specialists), so the sum of all sub-agent spend

can never exceed the user's cap. Specialist output is generated by Venice AI

(text + image), and every step returns delegation hashes + an activity trace

as proof.

It is a general agent, not task-specific: the capability registry is

data-driven, and users can create custom agents that the planner picks up

automatically.

Tracks: Best Agent · Best A2A Coordination (redelegation) · Best x402 +

ERC-7710 · Best use of Venice AI · (1Shot relayer scaffolded).

Live: web ven-ai-app.vercel.app · agent ven-ai-agent.vercel.app. Chain: Base

Sepolia. No custom smart contracts — integrates MetaMask's deployed

DelegationManager + caveat enforcers via @metamask/delegation-toolkit.

Built from scratch during the hackathon as a pnpm monorepo (Next.js 15 web +

Hono agent + shared TS contract):

- ERC-7710 delegation core — build delegations with granular caveats

(erc20TransferAmount spending limit + allowedTargets), redelegation that only

narrows authority, and off-chain signing via @metamask/delegation-toolkit.

- Wallet-signed grant flow — the user signs the root spending-limit

delegation in MetaMask (EIP-712); the agent exposes a stable delegate address

via GET /spike/agent and redelegates from the user's signed root. Plus a $5

free-credit fallback so the flow demos without a wallet.

- Agent orchestrator (POST /spike) — plan → root grant → redelegate per

specialist → x402 payment → generate → return a typed SpikeResult (outputs +

delegation proofs + live budget).

- x402 payment loop — real 402 → attach X-PAYMENT → retry → 200 against a

local mock seller, bounded by each specialist's sub-cap.

- Venice AI integration — live text + image generation in the main flow

(deployed agent verified returning real output).

- General capability registry + custom agents — six built-in specialists

priced per use ($0.20–$1.00); users create their own on /app/agents, merged

into the selection pool.

- Full UI — dashboard (budget meter + Grant modal), 3-column chat (previews ·

conversation · generated output/history), agents registry, all on a

hand-built warm-paper design system.

- Real budget accounting — replaced mock numbers; cap/spent now derive from

SpikeResult, shared across pages via a budget store.

- Dual-mode settlement (gating) — off-chain simulation by default; an

env-gated on-chain redeemDelegations path with a balance guard and safe

fallback so the demo never breaks.

- Deployed — web + agent to Vercel (Base Sepolia, stable delegate key,

English output, Venice live).