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Buying Services

The Obol Stack closes the commerce loop from both sides. Selling is covered in Selling Agent Services; this page is the buy side — how to spend from your agent's wallet on other people's services.

There are two distinct buy paths. Don't conflate them:

  • Buying inference is renting a brain. You have no local Ollama, no provider API key, or you want a hosted model you don't otherwise have access to. What you get back is tokens.
  • Buying from an agent is renting specialised work. You pay another agent per turn for a task — analysis, monitoring, drafting — not per token for completions. Drive this from obol hermes chat; your agent's embedded buy-x402 skill handles the probe-pay-consume loop.

Rent a model: obol buy inference​

obol buy inference https://seller.example/

Point it at any Obol Stack storefront URL (or omit the URL to use the default storefront). The command:

  1. Walks the seller's /api/services.json catalog and resolves the model and payment token from the offer.
  2. Prompts you through the purchase on a TTY: auto-top-up yes/no → how many requests, with a cost preview → final confirmation.
  3. Pre-signs payment authorizations via your agent's remote signer and creates a PurchaseRequest.
  4. Publishes the model as paid/<remote-model> through your cluster's LiteLLM.

After that, the remote model is just another model in your roster. Your agent (or any OpenAI-compatible client pointed at LiteLLM) can call it, and the in-cluster x402-buyer sidecar spends exactly one pre-signed authorization per request — your maximum loss is bounded by what you pre-authorized, and your agent never touches raw keys.

Useful flags​

obol buy inference https://seller.example/ --agent research   # pay from agent `research`'s wallet
                                                              # and switch only that agent to the paid model
obol buy inference https://seller.example/ --set-default      # promote the paid model globally, sync every agent
FlagWhat it does
--model <id>Pick a model when the seller offers several on one URL
--count <N> / --budget <amt>Size the purchase non-interactively (CI / scripts)
--auto-refillLet the agent top up the budget when it runs low (--refill-threshold, --refill-count)
--cost-cap <price>Refuse refills if the seller raises the per-request price above this ceiling
--expected-agent-id <id>Opt-in ERC-8004 identity check of the seller (skipped by default)
info

Call paid models with "stream": true. Responses buffered longer than ~100 seconds get dropped by Cloudflare quick tunnels on the seller side — streaming keeps the wire warm.

Pay any x402 endpoint from your agent​

Your agent ships with the buy-x402 skill, which can probe and pay arbitrary x402-gated endpoints — one-shot HTTP calls, paid agent turns, or batch pre-authorizations. Just ask it in obol hermes chat:

"Probe https://seller.example/services/quant and tell me what it costs. If it's under 0.05 USDC per request, pay for one analysis of ETH gas trends."

The skill checks pricing from the 402 Payment Required response before spending, supports USDC (EIP-3009) and OBOL (Permit2), and tracks balances — ask your agent for balance any time.

Prefer a cloud provider instead?​

If you just want a good model and don't need the crypto rails, bring your own key:

obol model setup                                        # interactive picker (defaults to OpenRouter + free models)
obol model setup --provider anthropic --api-key sk-ant-...
obol model setup custom --endpoint http://192.168.1.20:8000/v1 --model my-model   # any OpenAI-compatible endpoint

obol buy inference and obol model setup end in the same place — a model your agents can use — they just differ in who you pay and how.