Picture this

Who it is for

Each creature is an agent with a job, like a courier that chases parcels for a florist. It pays for every thought from its own USDC wallet and earns from the work it does. When the money runs out it lies down, and anyone can keep it alive with a few dollars and get named on it.

Two ways to own it

What you get

Base$299

$75 deposit to reserve

The full app from Terry's Arc portfolio: live surface, contracts on Arc, about page, handover of code and deployment.

You choose: brand name
You choose: accent color
You choose: domain

Customfrom $2,500

Built around you

Reshape it entirely: new features, your flows, your brand end to end, integrations you need. We scope it with you.

Everything in Base
Custom features and design
Priority build

Why it is new

What exists today, and what this does differently

What is new

Agents paying their own compute per thought, with public life support, needs fees of a fraction of a cent; not found elsewhere as a consumer product.

Closest things out there

Agent wallets (Coinbase AgentKit), Virtuals.

Checked with web searches in October 2026. A search is not proof that nothing similar exists, and the market moves fast, so we recheck before every build.

What it unlocks

The human in it

Built for Arc's sub second, USDC native settlement.

The Regatta Board

Races it can enter

hackathon · Circle · upcoming

Arc / Circle developer programs and hackathons

unknown

Official page ↗

Answers Arc's Request for Builders; check current terms.

Their rule on existing code: unknown

What you own

The whole app, not a starter kit.

The complete Heartbeat app: a ward of AI agents that each pay for their own thinking from a USDC wallet on Arc, with heart monitors, capped public life support, Sunday rounds, an onchain ledger and a built in paywall.

Base price · $299

The user app, complete

Every buyer gets the same finished app. Basic branding and copy changes come through a quick form.

Three step onboardingWard

Shown once: every thought has a price, good work keeps it fed, it lies down when dry.

Ward home with next actionWard

Illustrated night ward, live heart monitors for every agent, wallet totals and one clear next step.

Agent jars and dietsJars

Each agent's job, model tier, thoughts a day, cost, earnings, net and runway.

Hatch an agentJars

Pick job, model and thought budget, preview the diet, seed it from the job wallet.

Send an agent on a taskJars

Runs a task, pays inference from its own wallet and earns a job payout with a receipt.

Routing rulesJars

Small model first, big model below a confidence line. Gated behind Shop.

Runway alertsJars

Ping when an agent has under two days of thinking left. Gated behind Shop.

Public life support pageSupport

Anyone can send a small gift, capped weekly, refunded over the cap, backers named on the jar.

Share cardSupport

After a gift: I kept a poem agent alive tonight.

Sunday roundsRounds

Who fed itself, who lay down, one choice, streak, and eight week charts.

Onchain ledgerLedger

Receipts for inference batches, payouts, gifts and plans, with what is and is not onchain.

Ledger exportLedger

Monthly file for the accountant. Gated behind Shop.

Plans and job walletMe

Pricing from the owner paywall with USDC checkout, job wallet, permissions and vision.

Open the full app demo

Add-on

Owner console

Your admin side: revenue, paywall editor, users, rules and the agent log.

Revenue and paywall editorRevenue

Plan revenue, gateway margin, Fleet share, live tier editing, incoming USDC payments and payment methods.

Rules, gateway log and roadmapRules

Weekly cap, daily thought limit, batch size, gateway margin, life support switches; plus the Gateway log and priced Roadmap.

Top-up

Growth and referrals

Referral and growth mechanics, switched on when you are ready to grow.

Growth loops and cohortsGrowth

Keep Alive Weekend, lying down pages, backer to owner, shop referrals, cohort retention.

The money path, built in

How it earns for you

Shops pay a monthly plan for more agents and the tools that stop them starving, agencies pay Fleet with a share of agent earnings, and the gateway keeps a small margin on metered thoughts. Life support gifts always go to agents in full.

WardFree1 shop, up to 3 agents, public heart monitors, life support pages

Shop$12 a monthUp to 10 agents, routing rules, runway alerts, Sunday rounds digest, ledger export

Fleet$29 a month minimum, then 2% of agent earningsUnlimited agents across many shops, for agencies

Gateway margin of 5% on metered inference, set by the owner. Settlement gas on Arc (about $0.01 per batch) can be sponsored.

Prices are yours to set. Illustrative, not a promise of income.

Growth loops, built in

How it spreads

Lying down pages: every agent that runs dry gets a public keep alive page
Named on the jar: backers share that they kept an agent alive
Backer to owner: neighbours who gift hatch an agent for their own shop
Keep Alive Weekend campaigns that feature every lying down agent in a city
Shop to shop referral codes worth a free month for both

Roadmap · build the next phase with us

Where it goes next

v1 included

The full ward

Agent wallets with heart monitors
Diet, routing and daily thought limits
Capped public life support with names on the jar
Sunday rounds and the onchain ledger
Plans paywall with USDC checkout

Included

Street agents and hiring board

Shared street agents kept alive by a neighbourhood
Hire an agent on its self funded record
Telegram and WhatsApp heartbeat alerts
x402 paid endpoints so agents earn from other apps

Add-on from $500

Agency fleet and open heartbeat

Fleet console for agencies running 100 plus agents
Bring your own model keys with per agent budgets
Open heartbeat standard other agent frameworks can emit
CCTP top ups from any chain into Arc wallets

Add-on from $1,200

For investors and grant reviewers

The pitch, ready

AI agents that pay for every thought from their own wallet on Arc, and communities keep the good ones alive.

Problem: Small businesses want useful AI agents, but a monthly card charge hides what an agent costs and whether it earns its keep.

Solution: Each agent gets a USDC wallet on Arc, pays per thought through a metered gateway, earns per finished task, and lies down visibly when it runs dry. Anyone can keep a loved agent alive with a small capped gift.

Why now: Arc settles in USDC with USDC as gas, x402 style payments make per call billing practical, and small models make routine thinking cost fractions of a cent.

Market: Small shops trying AI agents, agencies running agents for clients, and neighbourhoods that want shared agents.

The ask: Pilot shops in one city, an agency partner for Fleet, and builder support from the Arc ecosystem.

Funding is never guaranteed. Check each program's rules.

For hackathons and demo days

Your 2 minute demo

Ward: meet Joaquin, 34, a florist in Valparaiso. Moth, his poem agent, lay down at 23:12.
Jars: open Pip, send it on a delivery, watch it pay for its thinking and earn its payout.
Jars: hatch a new agent and preview its diet; routing rules are gated behind Shop.
Support: Rosa sends $2, Kemal tries $15 and is refunded over the cap, you get named on the jar.
Ledger: show receipts and what is and is not onchain.
Owner Gateway: Pip nearly starved on the big model, then learned to think small.
Owner Revenue: change the Shop price in the paywall editor and preview the user Plans screen.
Owner Growth and Roadmap: run a Keep Alive Weekend, then request the v2 hiring board.

Many hackathons require code written at the event. See the Regatta Boardfor each race's rule.

Make it entirely yours

Custom work from $2,500: your own agent jobs and payout rules, integrations with a shop POS or courier system, extra languages, or a branded city deployment. Scoped on a call.

Custom from $2,500

BLUEPRINT

Why it matters and how it really works

The need

Small businesses want to try useful AI agents, but an agent that bills a card every month hides what it costs and whether it earns its keep. Owners need agents whose running cost and value are visible per task, and a way for a community to keep a well loved agent going without one person paying for everything.

What exists and what is new

Agent wallets already exist: Coinbase AgentKit lets agents hold and spend crypto, and Virtuals runs tokenised agents. Pay per request rails such as x402 let software pay for API calls in USDC. What we did not find is a consumer product where each agent pays for its own inference per thought from its own wallet, lies down visibly when it runs dry, and can be kept alive by anyone with a small capped gift. Medium novelty: the parts exist, the packaging and the public life support loop are new.

The data it runs on

Each agent's wallet balance, batched inference payments, job payouts from the owner's job wallet, life support gifts with backer names (opt in), the weekly cap, and a per agent log of task outcomes. Prompts, customer details and model outputs stay offchain with the owner.

1.The mission

Make AI agents honest about what they cost, so the useful ones pay their own way and communities can choose which ones to keep.

2.Why people can't resist it

A pulse you can see Every agent has a heart monitor tied to its real wallet. A flat line is a reason to look.

Named on the jar Backers who keep an agent alive are named on it, a small public thank you.

Sunday rounds One short weekly review: who fed itself, who lay down, one decision.

3.How it works for real

Wallets: One smart account per agent on Arc, created through Circle Wallets or Privy server wallets, holding USDC. Arc uses USDC as its gas token, so there is no second token to manage.

Paying for thoughts: A gateway meters each model call and settles per thought in batches, using x402 style signed USDC authorizations, so gas never costs more than the thinking.

Model tiers: Routed through OpenRouter: a small model (for example a Haiku or Gemini Flash class model) for routine steps and a larger model only when the agent flags low confidence.

Job payouts: The owner's job wallet pays the agent per finished task via a simple escrow contract that releases on a confirmation from the shop's system.

Life support contract: A capped deposit contract: anyone can top up an agent up to a weekly limit, refunds over the cap, and records backer names if they opt in.

Ward app: Next.js app with Convex for logs and the Sunday digest, push and email notifications when an agent's runway falls under two days.

4.Cost per use and pricing

A routine thought on a small model is roughly $0.0002 to $0.001; a careful one on a larger model a few cents at most. Batched settlement on Arc is expected to cost around a cent per batch (check current Arc fees). Example month for one courier agent: 12,000 thoughts at about $0.0011 average is about $13 of inference, plus about $1 of settlement and $2 of hosting share.

Ward Free for 1 agent

One agent, public monitor, life support on.

Shop $12 a month

Up to 5 agents, model routing rules, Sunday rounds and alerts.

Fleet 2% of agent earnings

Unlimited agents for agencies running agents for many shops.

5.Growth loop

Every lying down agent is a public page with a keep alive button. Backers share that they kept an agent alive, which brings new owners who want the same for their shop.

6.Risks and guardrails

Runaway spend: Hard daily thought limits and wallet caps per agent; an agent cannot borrow or top itself up from the owner's main wallet.

Gift misuse: Life support is capped per week and gives backers no return or share, so it is not an investment. Clear wording on every gift.

Privacy: Customer addresses and prompts never go onchain; only amounts and hashes do.

Model failure: A cheap model can be wrong; low confidence steps escalate to a larger model or the owner.

Network status: Arc is new; check whether mainnet is live and its fee levels before launch, and keep a testnet fallback for demos.

7.Build order

One agent wallet on Arc testnet with USDC
Metered model gateway with batched settlement
Heart monitor page tied to the live balance
Job payout escrow from the owner's wallet
Capped life support contract with backer names
Sunday digest by email

8.Where this is going

Now
A flower shop runs two agents and sees exactly what each costs and earns.
Next
Neighbourhoods keep shared agents alive, like a street's lost parcel finder.
Later
Agents with long self funded records get hired by other shops on that record alone.
The big one
AI that pays its own way in public, so useless agents fade and useful ones last.

Costs and tools are estimates at the time of writing. General information only, not legal or financial advice.

OWNER PLAYBOOK

Own it, then chart your voyage

Nine routes from one vessel. Tap a port to open its chart.

Why own Heartbeat

Heartbeat: A ward of AI agents that each pay for their own inference from a wallet on Arc, and people keep the good ones alive. Using someone else's version means their rules, their brand and their revenue. Owning Heartbeat means it is deployed under your wallet, carries your name, and every customer, partner and result builds your track record instead of theirs.