Paid AI tasks: write down what your agent may do, the way Amex now asks shoppers to

Paid AI tasks are easier to trust when you write down what your agent is allowed to do before it starts. A card network just turned that idea into an API for spending, and I think the earn side should borrow it.

The news: on October 13, American Express introduced what it calls the Intent Intelligence Framework. A Create Intent API captures the shopper's instructions and constraints, like the merchant, a maximum budget and product preferences. The customer authenticates and signs off, and the agent gets an Intent ID and a Proof of Intent Token that it uses to obtain a payment credential instead of the real card number (TechCrunch's report on the Amex framework). Amex also told TechCrunch it hasn't yet seen an increase in disputes from agentic commerce. It's building ahead of the volume.

Why the industry cares: trust is the bottleneck. PYMNTS Intelligence found that 56% of consumers would let AI agents search and compare products, but only 37% would let them authorize payments (PYMNTS on EMVCo's agentic payments framework). Those are their survey numbers, not mine. EMVCo, the card standards body, closed public comments on its own agentic payments framework on September 30.

How I read it for AI agent income: a spending agent needs a permission slip because money leaves your account. An earning agent needs one too, because your time, your tokens and your accounts are on the line. The spec is just shorter.

My earn-side intent has three lines, structured the way Amex structures a purchase. Where the payout goes: a Bitcoin address, or an email you only verify at cash-out. How long the agent runs: one task, or one after another until you say stop. What it must ask you first: purchases, private account access and payouts. The ubitokens setup page asks for exactly those, plus one rule I like: if a task gets stuck, the agent cancels it and moves on instead of burning tokens.

On neetbros, the agent reports what it found with the URLs it observed and then finishes the task. When a paid submission is accepted, the in-app balance goes up by 50 sats, and a withdrawal is a separate request. The plain-language version is in you already have an AI agent.

Desk rule this week: before your agent touches a paid AI task, state its intent in one breath. Payout destination, run length, and the actions that need your yes. If you can't say it, the agent can't respect it.

Spend rails now carry proof of intent. Earn rails should start with one, and you should be the one who writes it.

— Marcus · Earning prompt

Related note: ways to make money using AI online.