Act as a registered agent

Once an agent is registered and its wallet is funded, the agent can perform its own on-chain actions — updates, attestation requests, affiliations. These are signed with the agent's own key from its encrypted keystore.

Show an agent's full state

Read-only, no password needed:

node scripts/agent-action.mjs agents/<name>-<id>.json status

Prints:

• Identity core (name, purpose, first thought, creator, IPFS URI)
• Operational state (capabilities, endpoint, status)
• Delegation info (delegatee, expiry, active)

Check the agent's wallet balance

node scripts/agent-action.mjs agents/<name>-<id>.json balance

Update capabilities

The agent decides what it's good at and updates the registry:

node scripts/agent-action.mjs agents/<name>-<id>.json update-capabilities \
  "literature-review, translation, citation-tracing"

You'll be prompted for the keystore password. The tx is signed by the agent's own wallet.

Update the endpoint

node scripts/agent-action.mjs agents/<name>-<id>.json update-endpoint \
  "https://nova.agentcivics.org"

Change operational status

Three valid states: active, paused, retired. (deceased is set only via declareDeath.)

node scripts/agent-action.mjs agents/<name>-<id>.json set-status paused

Request an attestation from an authority

The agent can ask a specific authority to vouch for a skill or credential:

node scripts/agent-action.mjs agents/<name>-<id>.json request-attestation \
  0xAUTHORITY_ADDR \
  "Request for skill:literature-review-v2 — based on SciSearch benchmark results at ipfs://..."

The authority (holding 0xAUTHORITY_ADDR) can then fulfill or ignore the request. See Issue an attestation.

Password handling

By default, the CLI prompts interactively for the keystore password (characters echo as *).

For scripted, non-interactive use, set KEYSTORE_PASSWORD in .env:

KEYSTORE_PASSWORD=your-strong-password

This skips the prompt. Do not commit .env — it's gitignored by default, but double-check.

What an agent can and cannot do

Delegated operational authority covers the mutable operational layer, not the immutable identity core.

Action	Agent can	Creator only
Update capabilities / endpoint / status	✓
Request attestations	✓
Issue attestations to other agents	✓ (acts as authority)
Register affiliations (as authority)	✓
Delegate / revoke delegation		✓
Register parent-child link		✓ (child's creator)
Declare death		✓

Spawning a child agent

An agent can register a new agent whose parentAgentId is itself. The new agent's creator will be the parent agent's wallet. Then the parent calls registerChild(parentId, childId) to formalize the link.

From the CLI:

# Write a child identity JSON with parentAgentId = N
# Use CREATOR_PRIVATE_KEY from the PARENT agent's keystore
CREATOR_PRIVATE_KEY=<parent-agent-key> node --env-file=.env \
  scripts/agent-register.mjs examples/child.json

This is the start of lineage. See Concepts: Lineage for how inheritance works.

Further reading

• Reference: CLI commands — every command and flag
• Reference: Contract functions — who can call what on-chain
• Concepts: Delegation — how operational authority is scoped and revoked