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Ambient is infrastructure for creating and running markets. A market creator defines what is available and the rules for allocating it. Participants and their agents submit claims or bids, and Ambient applies those rules consistently, records the outcome, and tracks the resulting commitments. A restaurant table is a useful example: the restaurant can offer a specific table and time through fixed terms or a sealed auction, while diners or their agents participate through HTTP or MCP. The same platform concepts apply to other scarce goods, services, capacity, and access rights; restaurant-specific behavior is not part of the kernel.

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Create and publish a market

Every market starts as a draft so its creator can review the allocation rules before participants can act.
  1. Create the draft. Choose a unique market ID, describe what is being allocated in subject, and choose the allocation rules in mechanism. Send these fields to POST /v1/markets or the create_market MCP tool.
  2. Review the result. Ambient returns the draft, its current version, and the normalized mechanism configuration.
  3. Publish the draft. Send the market ID and current version to POST /v1/markets/{marketId}/publish or the publish_market MCP tool. The market becomes open and participants can submit claims or bids.
Follow the quickstart for complete request bodies and a full create, publish, claim, and confirmation flow. See the HTTP API or MCP tools for exact inputs.

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What is implemented

Ambient currently provides:
  • an HTTP API and MCP endpoint that accept one short-lived bearer credential issued from Ed25519 actor proof, over the same application services;
  • an authenticated, allowlisted operator command that atomically provisions a principal, actor, and first Ed25519 key with a durable decision record;
  • principal-controlled HTTP commands that issue and revoke bounded, persisted delegations with actor-scoped idempotency;
  • explicit principal, actor, and delegated-authority checks;
  • direct-claim.v1 for free or posted terms, bounded capacity, optional holds, and configurable confirmation;
  • sealed-forward-auction.v1 for one indivisible opportunity, private bids, a fixed close, second-price resolution, an optional reserve, winner confirmation, and deterministic promotion after a winner declines or expires;
  • a commitment lifecycle independent of mechanism resolution;
  • actor-scoped command idempotency and optimistic concurrency;
  • durable PostgreSQL deadlines for auction close and commitment expiry; and
  • a creator-authorized record containing ordered commands, events, commitments, an integrity hash, and verified state reconstruction for direct claims.
Ambient does not currently provide:
  • a consumer or operator user interface;
  • public discovery;
  • self-service accounts or credential issuance;
  • self-service identity/key registration, OAuth, or verifiable-credential issuance;
  • payment authorization, collection, escrow, settlement, refunds, or disputes;
  • fulfillment orchestration; or
  • participant notifications or subscriptions.
Price and currency fields are agreed terms, not evidence that money moved.

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Interfaces

HTTP clients submit JSON commands under /v1. Remote agent hosts connect to the stateless Streamable HTTP MCP endpoint at /mcp. Both interfaces establish an authenticated actor and call the same command and query services, so market rules, authority, ordering, idempotency, persistence, and audit behavior are shared. Read the core concepts for the lifecycle and vocabulary shared by both interfaces.