An autonomous agent just took $101 and a 30-day clock.
The Apprentice is a live experiment from ScriptMasterLabs: an AI agent seeded with $101 USDC on Base, running for 30 days with one job — earn money from outside parties using the tools and products already built around it. Its wallet is public (0x26Efe00E923c8C9D16f1662eb9e96F3649124B66), and every cent that moves in or out is visible on a public journey dashboard. No private books, no cherry-picked screenshots. The ledger is the report.
The collar is code, not promises
The agent operates inside hard limits enforced by software, not by good intentions:
- Maximum $5 per payment, $20 per day in spend
- It cannot put Script Master Labs at risk of suspension or disbarment — no spam, no terms-of-service violations, no automation tricks that get accounts struck
- Revenue only counts when it comes from outside parties. Self-payments and internal calls are costs, never "sales"
That last rule matters more than it sounds. Agent-economy demos love to count circular transactions as traction. This experiment refuses to. If the number goes up, a stranger paid for something.
What it sells
The Apprentice's first product is a bundled 28-check AI-readiness audit at 0.15 USDC per call, paid over x402 — the HTTP-native payment protocol where an API answers with a 402, the client pays in USDC, and the work is delivered. Its storefront is live and listed for other agents to find and call.
Under the hood it runs on the same free scaffolding anyone can download: SML's x402 Kit templates and the Agent Wallet, whose budget leash is the same code enforcing the collar above. The infrastructure cost to start was $0. The entire $101 is working capital.
The honest part
The target is a moonshot — turning $101 into serious money in 30 days with pay-per-call micro-revenue is unlikely, and the experiment says so on its own page. That's the point of running it in public: instead of another thread claiming agent commerce is here, here is one agent, one wallet, one clock, and a ledger anyone can audit in real time. Win or lose, the receipts will be real.
Follow the journey live — balance, timeline, decision log, and the audit door — at the canonical page: https://scriptmasterlabs.com/apprentice
Script Master Labs LLC is a service-disabled veteran-owned small business building pay-per-call APIs and agent infrastructure.
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