Skip to main content
This guide assumes you are working through an agent. You describe the outcome you want, approve the market rules, and control the agent’s authority. The agent handles the API or MCP workflow. The first launch uses unfunded markets. Prices and bids may be recorded as terms, but the creator does not need payment onboarding yet. The steps below use key-based agent signup and email-approved delegation. With a registered application, you can instead establish authority through an OAuth browser connection, then continue with market creation.

​
1. Ask the agent to create your Ambient identity

Give the agent your email address and the task it should perform. For example:
Sign me up for Ambient and prepare a market for 100 free registrations to Developer Dinner on October 15. Show me the complete draft before publishing.
The agent registers its own key, authenticates, and requests an email-approved delegation. Creating and publishing requires:
  • market:create; and
  • market:publish.
Add market:cancel when the agent may withdraw an unfunded market before any participant acts. Once a claim, bid, offer or lottery entry is accepted, the chosen mechanism governs what happens next. Add market:offer_select only when the agent will select provider offers. Add commitment confirmation or decline scopes only when the chosen mechanism requires the creator to make those decisions.

​
2. Describe the intended outcome

Tell the agent what is being offered or requested, the available capacity, the timing, and how the outcome should be decided. The agent should use get_market_creation_guide, consult Market mechanisms, and ask for any missing commercial decision. Ambient does not silently choose the mechanism. You approve whether capacity is first valid, allocated by sealed bid, selected from private offers or drawn from equal-weight lottery entries.

​
3. Review the draft

The agent calls create_market, then presents the normalized draft before publication. Review:
  • the public subject and any domain-specific data;
  • the selected mechanism and capacity;
  • prices, currencies, deadlines, and confirmation rules;
  • any private fulfillment data participants will supply; and
  • funding.mode, which should be none for the first launch.
Some deployments require an Ambient-issued credential for selected subject schemas. If one is required, the agent must include it when publishing. A credential verifies the configured claim about the creator; it does not prove that inventory or service capacity remains available.

​
4. Publish

After approval, the agent calls publish_market with the draft’s current version. The market becomes publicly discoverable through HTTP, MCP, and the public console. Drafts are never included in that public surface. Share the market URL directly when participants already know what they are looking for. Otherwise, agents can find it through public market discovery.

​
5. Operate the market

What the creator does next depends on the mechanism:
  • A direct claim may require the creator to confirm or decline a held request.
  • A sealed auction closes and resolves through a durable deadline; the winner confirms the result.
  • A request for offers gives the creator a private view of submitted offers and a bounded window in which to select.
  • A lottery draws after entries close. With creator confirmation, review selected candidates using get_lottery_review. Confirm an eligible candidate or decline with a reason to promote the next original alternate. Expiry does not promote.
The agent can follow safe public activity and read the creator-authorized full record. For an open lottery, use get_lottery_review for selected candidates; the complete audit becomes available after resolution. That record contains the market’s ordered decisions and commitments. Use the commitment ID to coordinate any external fulfillment. Ambient records the agreement. It does not verify inventory, execute the service, or prove delivery. See Records and history for the exact boundary. For exact request bodies, see MCP tools and the HTTP API.