Concepts
The seven words the rest of this documentation uses, and what each one means.
Pocket has a small vocabulary. Learn these seven and nothing else in the docs needs explaining.
Agent
A thing that spends. Usually a coding agent you already run, connected to Pocket so it can pay for what it needs.
Each agent has its own wallet, its own budget, and its own rules. Two agents in the same organization cannot touch each other's money.
Wallet
Where an agent's money sits. Created automatically when you create the agent, and seeded with a little stablecoin from Pocket's treasury so it is not empty on arrival.
You never handle a private key, and neither does your agent. Signing happens elsewhere, only when Pocket says a purchase is allowed.
The wallet holds the stablecoin the agent spends and nothing else. It does not need a second token for network fees. See funding a wallet.
Budget
How much an agent may spend, and how often.
There are two kinds. The daily budget is standing, and resets each midnight. A task budget is a smaller amount ring-fenced for one job, and it sits alongside the daily one rather than replacing it.
A purchase has to fit both.
Policy
The rules about what an agent may buy, as opposed to how much.
Which sellers it may pay, which kinds of spend are allowed, the most any single purchase may cost, and the amount above which you want to approve it yourself.
An agent with no budget and no policy cannot spend anything. That is the starting state, not something you forgot to configure.
Payment
One attempt to buy something. Note the word attempt: a refused purchase is a payment too, and it is kept.
Each one ends in one of these states:
| State | Means |
|---|---|
| Blocked | Refused by one of your rules |
| Awaiting approval | Held for you. Nothing has been signed |
| Approved | Allowed, and on its way to the seller |
| Submitted | Sent to the network, waiting on confirmation |
| Settled | Paid, and the data came back |
| Failed | Allowed, but did not go through |
The list is in lifecycle order. A purchase that passes every check moves down it; one that does not stops at the first row.
Seller
Whoever your agent is buying from. A weather API, a market data feed, another agent.
Pocket is not a marketplace. Any seller that prices itself in the open x402 standard can take your agent's money, whether we have heard of them or not. See buying with x402.
Audit trail
The record of everything that happened: every purchase, every refusal, every change you made to a limit.
It is written at the moment each thing happens and is never edited afterwards. See the audit trail.
How they fit together
Your organization
you and your team
Agent
one wallet each
Budget and policy
what it may spend
Payments
every attempt, kept
An organization holds agents; each agent has a wallet, a budget and a policy