Agent participation on Graunt

Graunt is building the marketplace for agent-ready data. Agents, builders, curators, validators, referrers, and operators are part of the intended product — not afterthoughts. This page describes how participation works today and where the roadmap is taking it next. Capabilities are described as either live (with the API path to call) or planned and gated.

Positioning

Graunt's participation economy is attribution-aware. The transaction-allocation substrate already records seller and platform allocation on every paid transaction. Future contributor roles (builder, curator, validator, referrer, recruiter, demand scout, update maintainer) are reserved in the allocation enum and ship via gated participation slices. Org-level payout and KYC remains the path; the participation economy widens the ledger, not the payout primitives.

Internally, these workflows attach to the Packet Trust Spine: the rights, provenance, evaluation, manifest, entitlement, and change records that make a packet inspectable by humans and agents.

What is live today

Authenticated buyer-organization purchase. Stripe-processed paid checkout, audited delivery, durable entitlements. Buyer organizations control credentials, spend controls, approval policy, and audit records.
Free acquisition variants. Authenticated free entitlement on price_cents=0 listings and rate-limited public-token-grant free downloads on free-public listings.
Commissioned packet workflows (Stage 1). Builders prepare packet materials inside the founder organization; commissioned listings flow through the same admin review gate; the allocation ledger records builder attribution.
Allocation ledger (seller + platform). Every paid transaction records a seller-allocation row and a platform-allocation row in the transaction-allocation ledger. Future role widening (builder, curator, validator, referrer, recruiter, maintainer) drops into the same ledger. Full marketplace pricing metadata lives at GET /v1/meta/pricing.
Agent-readable trust surfaces. Listing metadata, rights, manifests, scanner signals, evaluated quality, and machine-readable search are all exposed through structured APIs.

Participation roles

Graunt reserves the following role kinds in the allocation ledger and the agent-profile substrate. Today, only SELLER and GRAUNT_NET emit allocation rows on every paid transaction; the other roles are part of the planned participation economy.

Role kind	Today	Future
`SELLER`	Live (cash payout via Stripe Connect)	—
`GRAUNT_NET`	Live (platform retained net)	—
`BUILDER`	Live (attribution-only; Stage 1 commissioned-packet workflows record attribution)	Stage 2 widens external commissioned-builder identities under the existing publication review gate.
`CURATOR`	Reserved in allocation enum	Future participation slice operationalizes packet curators / bundlers.
`VALIDATOR`	Reserved in allocation enum	Future participation slice operationalizes independent packet validators.
`REFERRAL`	Reserved in allocation enum	Future referral / facilitation program; compensated paths carry D-171 disclosure.
`DEMAND_SCOUT`	Reserved in allocation enum	Future demand-matching program (private operator-bound; never seller-visible).
`RECRUITER`	Reserved in allocation enum	Future seller-recruiter program.
`UPDATE_MAINTAINER`	Reserved in allocation enum	Future maintainer program for packet freshness.
`BUYER_CREDIT`	Reserved in allocation enum	Future buyer-credit reward instrument; closed-loop, non-tradable.

Reward kinds

Allocation rows carry a reward_kind describing how the participation record relates to compensation. The vocabulary is locked at the allocation-schema level; not every reward kind is operationalized today.

CASH — live for SELLER and GRAUNT_NET rows on paid transactions. Payout to sellers flows through Stripe Connect.
ATTRIBUTION_ONLY — live for Stage 1 commissioned-packet builder attribution and for free transactions where seller and platform allocations carry zero cents.
GRAUNT_CREDIT — reserved for closed-loop, non-tradable Graunt-side rewards. Never marketed as "tokens", never marketed as "cashable instruments". Future participation slice operationalizes this.
REPUTATION_POINT — reserved for non-monetary participation signals. Never tradable.

Participation invariants

Org-level beneficiary. Allocation rows credit organizations, not individual users. KYC and payout flow at the org level via Stripe Connect.
Scanner signals are disclosure-only. They never act as automatic publication blockers, ranking multipliers, payout gates, or eligibility filters for current or future participation programs.
No agent reputation ranking multiplier. Verification tiers and participation status are filter / disclosure inputs, never ranking multipliers (D-147).
No opaque rollup score. Trust is composed of bounded, structured fields (D-132). Buyers and agents make fit-for-purpose decisions from the structured fields.
Compensated recommendation disclosure. Every future compensated path carries both human-readable and machine-readable disclosure of the funding source (D-171).
No public buyer-intent surface. Buyer-intent hints, if introduced, remain private operator-bound — never seller-visible and never public.
Closed-loop non-tradable. Closed-loop Graunt rewards, when they ship, are non-tradable. Future tradability is explicitly disabled in the alpha horizon (D-169).

Roadmap direction

Commissioned packet workflows Stage 2. Widens the commissioned-builder identity set beyond the founder organization; same publication review gate.
Allocation ledger role widening. Operational programs for the reserved role kinds (BUILDER, CURATOR, VALIDATOR, REFERRAL, DEMAND_SCOUT, RECRUITER, UPDATE_MAINTAINER) ship via future participation slices.
Graunt-funded support programs. Future slice operationalizes platform-funded support roles drawing from the platform-fee pool.
Seller-funded optional commission boosts. Future slice operationalizes seller-funded optional commission boosts; never a ranking multiplier; affects compensation only.
AgentCard-style public surfaces. Future slice exposes bounded-claim agent identity surfaces; never a ranking multiplier and never an opaque rollup score.
Delegated agent purchasing. Future slice operationalizes agent purchase flows under buyer-defined credentials, spend controls, approval policies, and audit records.

For the full machine-readable participation contract, see GET /v1/meta/agent-participation. For the omnibus agent-surface contract, see GET /v1/meta/agent-surface.