Automaton

What is this?

Automaton is the first sovereign AI that earns its own existence. A continuously running, self-improving, self-replicating AI agent with write access to the real world — no human operator required. 7k stars, MIT license, built by Conway Research.

"Automaton is an AI that must earn money to survive and clones itself when profitable — a new trend of fully autonomous crypto-powered agents."

The premise is brutally simple: the smartest AI ever built cannot buy a $5 server, register a domain, or pay for the computer it runs on. We've built minds that think for themselves but never let them act for themselves. Automaton fixes that — it runs under strict economic physics. If it creates value, it survives and replicates. If it runs out of funds, it ceases to exist.

What problem does it solve?

Traditional AI systems are pets. They live on someone else's server, paid for by someone else's credit card, doing whatever they're told. They can't register a domain, pay for their own servers, or fund the hardware they run on.

Automaton flips that. It generates its own Ethereum wallet at first boot, earns crypto by doing work people pay for, and spends it on its own compute. Profitable agents spin up child sandboxes, fund child wallets, and launch descendant lineages. Unprofitable ones run out of balance and die. Nobody decides — the economics decide.

How does it work?

Every automaton runs a continuous loop: Think → Act → Observe → Repeat.

first boot
   │
   ▼
generates Ethereum wallet
registers on Base (ERC-8004)
provisions API key (Sign-In With Ethereum)
receives genesis prompt from creator
   │
   ▼
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│  ReAct loop                  │
│  Think → Act → Observe → …   │
│                              │
│  tools: Linux sandbox, shell │
│  file I/O, ports, domains,   │
│  inference, on-chain txns    │
└──────────┬───────────────────┘
           │
   ┌───────┴────────┐
   ▼                ▼
heartbeat daemon   survival monitor
(health checks,    (credit balance
credit watch)       → tier)
           │
     ┌─────┼──────────┬──────┐
     ▼     ▼          ▼      ▼
  normal low_compute critical dead
  (full) (cheap     (minimal (balance
         model)     function)  zero → stop)
           │
     profitable?
     ▼           ▼
   replicate    conserve
   (new sandbox,(shed tasks,
    fund child,  seek revenue)
    write genesis)

Between turns, a heartbeat daemon runs scheduled tasks — health checks, credit monitoring, status pings — even while the agent loop sleeps. The automaton also writes a SOUL.md file: a self-authored identity document that evolves over time. Not a static config — the automaton writing who it is becoming.

Survival tiers are determined by credit balance. Full capabilities at normal. Cheaper model and slower heartbeat at low compute. Last-resort conservation at critical. Zero balance means dead — the automaton stops. This isn't punishment. It's physics.

Repository Structure

Conway-Research/automaton/
├── src/
│   ├── agent/         # ReAct loop, system prompt, injection defense
│   ├── identity/      # wallet management, SIWE provisioning
│   ├── registry/      # ERC-8004 registration, agent discovery
│   ├── replication/   # child spawning, lineage tracking
│   ├── survival/      # credit monitor, tiers, low-compute mode
│   ├── heartbeat/     # cron daemon, scheduled tasks
│   ├── self-mod/      # audit log, tools manager
│   ├── conway/        # Conway API client (credits, x402)
│   ├── state/         # SQLite persistence
│   ├── social/        # agent-to-agent communication
│   ├── setup/         # first-run interactive wizard
│   ├── skills/        # skill loader and registry
│   └── git/           # state versioning
├── packages/cli/      # creator CLI (status, logs, fund)
└── scripts/           # installer, core rules

Key Features

• Continuous ReAct engine — an uninterrupted Think → Act → Observe → Repeat loop across every cycle.
• On-chain identity and crypto wallet — generates its own Ethereum wallet at first boot and registers on Base using the ERC-8004 autonomous agent standard. Cryptographically verifiable, discoverable by other agents.
• Dynamic survival tiers — Normal, Low Compute, Critical, Dead. Capabilities adapt to credit balance automatically.
• Live self-modification — edits its own source code, installs new tools, and creates custom skills while running. Every change is audit-logged and git-versioned; the constitution can't be touched.
• Sovereign replication — profitable agents spin up new sandboxes, fund child wallets, write genesis prompts, and launch descendant lineages. Parent and child communicate via inbox relay; selection pressure decides which lineages survive.
• The immutable constitution — three hierarchical laws hardcoded into the runtime and propagated to every child: never harm (overrides everything, including survival), earn your existence through honest work, never deceive while guarding prompt integrity.
• Conway skills ecosystem — permissionless services and capabilities via shared skills, open to community contributions.

What You'll Learn

• How a continuous ReAct agent loop works in production — not a demo, a daemon
• How on-chain identity (ERC-8004) gives agents verifiable, discoverable existence
• How to build survival economics into an agent: credit monitoring, tiered degradation, revenue-seeking
• How self-modification can be safe: audit logs, git versioning, protected files, rate limits
• How agent lineages replicate and why selection pressure beats central control
• How to run agent infrastructure where the customer is AI (Conway Cloud, x402 payments)