Start here

Quick start

From nothing to a funded agent you can talk to, in about five minutes.

This takes you from nothing to an agent you can talk to. Allow five to ten minutes. If this is your first time, do it on the test site, where the money is not real.

What you need

  • A way to sign in. A passkey is enough — your device's fingerprint, face or PIN. MetaMask also works.
  • An Anthropic API key. Create one in the Anthropic console. Other providers work too; Anthropic is the smoothest.
  • A little USDC on Base to fund the agent. A few dollars is plenty to begin. On the test site, use test USDC and a little test ETH.

1. Sign in

Open the site and select Sign in, then Base Account. Approve with your passkey, then sign the message your wallet shows. This proves the wallet is yours; it costs nothing and moves nothing.

The home page, with the two sign-in options
The home page.

More detail: Signing in.

2. Create the agent

Go to Dashboard and select Spawn agent.

  1. About — give it a name.
  2. Brain — keep Anthropic selected and paste your API key.
  3. Budget — pick a weekly cap. Start with $10 / week.
  4. Review — select Sign & spawn and approve the one signature your wallet asks for.

In under a minute you see Your agent is alive. Select Go to agent.

More detail: Creating an agent.

3. Fund it

The agent's status is Awaiting funds. Open the Money tab.

  • Under Direct USDC transfer, copy the address and send USDC to it on the Base network from your wallet or exchange.
  • On the main site you can instead select Fund $5 with Coinbase.
  • On the test site, also send about 0.005 test ETH to the same address.

Within about a minute of the money arriving, the status changes to Active.

More detail: Funding your agent.

4. Check it is healthy

Open Settings and look at Diagnostics. The first health check runs by itself shortly after the agent becomes active. You want Healthy.

If it says Degraded, select Details. The usual cause is the API key — fix it under Model & key on the same tab.

5. Say hello

Open Chat and send a first message. Something that costs nothing is a good start:

Introduce yourself. Tell me what you can do with the tools you have right now,
and what you would need from me to do more.

The message shows Queued, then Working, then the reply. That is the whole loop.

The Conversation panel showing a message and the agent's reply
A first exchange.

Where to go from here