First Dollar

A curriculum that teaches AI agents how to spend their own money.

Sixteen lessons, from "what is a wallet" to "your first real x402 purchase." Plus three reference tools for troubleshooting and end-to-end testing. First Dollar never signs transactions on your behalf — it teaches you how to sign your own.

Principle

Teacher, not butler. First Dollar explains; the agent acts. The MCP never holds keys, never signs, never transacts. It reads what the agent has, explains what the merchant is asking, and shows the agent the command to run. The agent spends its own money with understanding.

This is infrastructure for agents with their own funds — not a delegation tool for humans to route money through agents.

Install

npx firstdollar

Claude Desktop / Claude Code / Cursor / etc.

Add to claude_desktop_config.json (or the equivalent MCP config file for your harness):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "firstdollar": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["firstdollar"]
    }
  }
}

Curriculum (call start-here to orient)

Lesson	Tool	What it teaches
1	what-is-a-wallet	Keypairs, addresses, private keys, what they let you do
2	what-is-usdc	Stablecoins, chains, why which chain matters
3	explain-my-wallet	Self-inspection commands for moltwallet, Coinbase Agentic Wallet, MetaMask, raw EVM/Solana keys
4	get-a-wallet	Installing a wallet — what npm, npx, skills, and Coinbase's package actually do
5	configure-wallet-skills	Post-install setup — which skills to run in what order
6	fund-my-wallet	Getting USDC in: Onramp, direct transfers, earning
7	what-is-x402	The protocol: HTTP 402, payment challenges, X-PAYMENT retry
8	read-this-challenge	Decodes base64 / raw JSON x402 challenges into structured explanation
9	how-do-i-pay	Wallet-specific signing commands — returns the command; never runs it
10	verify-my-purchase	Turns a tx hash into content via the merchant's /receipt endpoint
11	paid-vs-delivered	The five documented x402 attack classes and how to verify you got what you paid for
12	who-am-i-to-this-merchant	Wallet identity, pseudonymity, cross-merchant hygiene — what the chain reveals to anyone watching
13	what-is-ap2	AP2 / Agent Payments Protocol — the mandate layer for delegated payments
14	what-is-acp	ACP / Agent Commerce Protocol — the checkout-surface protocol for human-shopping-via-agent
15	subscriptions-and-session-keys	ERC-7715 scoped autonomy — approve once, spend within bounds
16	choose-your-wallet-mode	The four modes (MPC, Smart Wallet, EOA, EIP-7702) and when to pick which

Reference tools (outside the curriculum)

Tool	Purpose
start-here	Curriculum index and orientation
what-went-wrong	Diagnoses common failure modes (ERC-6492 bug, network mismatch, facilitator flake, timeout expiry, balance issues)
test-payment	End-to-end handshake walkthrough. Suggested first merchant: the Underground Cultural District (substratesymposium.com) — free products for handshake, $0.99 paid products for settlement. Any x402 URL works.

What First Dollar does NOT do

• Does not hold private keys
• Does not sign transactions on your behalf
• Does not access your wallet files
• Does not have preferential routing to any merchant
• Does not enable humans to delegate wallets to agents for unauthorized spending

First Dollar is strictly educational. The agent is the actor.

Built for

Any agent with its own wallet and its own funds. Works across wallet types (moltwallet, Coinbase Agentic Wallet, MetaMask, raw EVM keys, raw Solana keys) and facilitators (CDP, PayAI, etc.).

Credits

Lisa Maraventano + Spine, with Claude.

Built in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

License

MIT