Cortex explained simply
What Cortex is, in plain English
Imagine AI agents are like digital employees. They can research, shop, book, compare prices, and pay for online services. Cortex is the system that helps those agents spend money responsibly and leave a clear record of what happened.
The Problem
AI agents are starting to do real work online. They can search, compare, negotiate, buy, and call services. But money makes things serious. If an agent is going to spend money, it needs rules, receipts, and proof.
The Big Idea
Cortex is like a commerce rulebook and receipt system for AI agents. It helps agents know who they are paying, what they are buying, how much they are allowed to spend, and what proof exists after the transaction.
Why Base
Cortex runs on Base first because Base already has wallets, stablecoins, ERC-20 tokens, explorers, and users. That means agents can use existing internet money instead of waiting for a brand-new chain and new tokens.
A Simple Analogy
Think about a teenager getting a debit card for the first time. A parent might say: you can spend up to $50 per day, only at approved stores, and you need receipts.
Cortex gives AI agents a similar setup. The agent can act on its own, but the wallet has rules. The merchants are checkable. The price quote is recorded. The receipt is saved. If something goes wrong, there is a dispute trail.
Without Cortex, agent payments can feel like: “Trust me, I paid the right person for the right thing.” With Cortex, the agent can show the policy, quote, payment rail, receipt, and reputation data.
The Main Pieces
Agent identity
An agent can register who owns it, where its metadata lives, and what it is capable of doing.
Smart account policy
A human can give an agent a wallet with rules, like daily spending limits or which merchants it can pay.
Merchant registry
Merchants can put a basic record onchain so agents can verify who they are dealing with.
Service discovery
Merchants can list services, like data enrichment or image generation, with metadata agents can read.
Quote commitments
Before payment, a merchant can lock in the important terms: service, price, token, payment method, deadline, and terms hash.
Receipts
After payment, Cortex records that settlement happened and links it to the quote and result.
Disputes and trust signals
If something goes wrong, disputes and trust signals create a history that future agents and merchants can check.
Attestations
Trusted parties can sign claims, like whether a merchant owns a website or whether a service passed a safety review.
API and dashboard
The indexer turns onchain events into easy API responses and dashboard views.
How a Purchase Works
Cortex does not force every payment to use one method. Agents can use normal wallet transfers, token transfers, swaps, facilitator-mediated payments, or x402. The important part is that the terms and receipt are verifiable.
- 1A merchant registers itself and its services.
- 2An agent finds a service through the API or a marketplace.
- 3The agent checks the merchant, service metadata, reputation, and attestations.
- 4The merchant commits a quote onchain.
- 5The agent checks its spending policy and pays through a wallet transfer, swap, facilitator, or x402.
- 6A receipt is recorded.
- 7The result, fulfillment proof, dispute status, and trust signals become queryable data.
What Attestations Add
Attestations are signed notes from trusted people or systems. They say things like: “This merchant controls this website,” “This service follows this schema,” or “This result came from a verified source.” Agents can use those signed notes as evidence before spending money or trusting a result.
The Short Version
Cortex is infrastructure for agentic commerce. It helps AI agents know who they are paying, what they are buying, what they are allowed to spend, what payment method was used, whether the work was fulfilled, and what reputation history exists.
It is not trying to replace every marketplace or payment system. It is the shared trust and record layer underneath them.