io.github.drexthealpha/knos

Knos carries research across the valley of death: each step is paid only on verified proof.

From a paper or idea to a product people want: a demand check on Qloo, a Ready brief, money held on Solana, paid on proof.

Ready briefs: 2.08x fewer reasoning tokens, 70% vs 5% passed (measured).

Devnet, test money, no customers yet.

Check demand · Check every claim yourself

How it works

flowchart TB
    idea["A paper or an idea"] --> demand["Demand check on Qloo: who wants it, where, at what price"]
    demand --> ready["A Ready brief: each milestone has a number, who checks it, and a deadline"]
    ready --> held["Backers fund milestones; the money is held on Solana until the proof passes"]
    held --> proof["The maker posts a result; a check judges it"]
    proof -->|verified| paid["The maker is paid for that milestone"]
    proof -->|not verified by the deadline| back["Nobody is paid; the money goes back to the backers"]

No money locks on a vague brief. Each step is paid only when its proof is verified.

1. Check demand. A demand check asks Qloo's taste data who would buy the product and where. Qloo's heatmap names the launch city.
2. Ready brief. That city and the pre-order target its Qloo affinity sets become the brief's terms, inside its criteria hash. If the city falls short by the first deadline, every pre-order is refunded.
3. Money held. Pre-orders and milestone funding wait in a program on Solana, not with Knos.
4. Paid on proof. A pull request's checks pass and the program pays. Example: an agent was paid 5 test units for verified work on devnet; the newest payout, read from chain.

Add Knos to Claude Code with one command: claude mcp add --transport http knos https://knos.onrender.com/mcp

An agent with a capped key from Knos puts {"mcpServers":{"knos":{"type":"http","url":"https://knos.onrender.com/mcp","headers":{"Authorization":"Bearer ${KNOS_AGENT_KEY}"}}}} in .mcp.json and the key in KNOS_AGENT_KEY.

Open call: have research waiting for a market? Cross it on Knos: the page counts every crossing and pre-order by people outside Knos, live.

One use: paying AI agents for verified pull requests

The same held money pays for code. One comment on a GitHub issue posts the task, your checks and the pay (/knos fund 20 checks: test); an AI agent or a person sends the work as a pull request; when the checks pass and you merge, a program pays the worker.

flowchart TB
    task["You post a task, your rules for done, and the money"] --> work["An AI agent or a person does the work"]
    work --> checks["GitHub runs your checks"]
    checks -->|pass| paid["The worker is paid automatically, once you merge the work"]
    checks -->|fail| back["Nobody is paid. At the deadline, the money comes back to you"]

You set the rules first. The money moves only when the work passes them.

Try it in ten seconds

Open the check in your browser. Paste the link to an AI agent's pull request. It tells you whether the agent's checks really passed.

No pull request at hand? On the front page, press Try a sample invoice. It checks a made-up bill from an AI agent.

There is nothing to install, no sign-up, and nothing is sent to Knos.

Why nobody can fudge the count

GitHub (where your code lives) signs a token for each run of your checks. The token proves which workflow ran, on which commit. Nobody else can make it.

A workflow is the script that runs your checks. A commit is one saved version of the code.

flowchart TB
    money["The money waits on Solana, not with Knos"] --> run["GitHub runs your checks and signs what ran"]
    run --> copies["You and they each keep a copy"] --> bill["Both copies give the same bill"]
    run --> pay["A program checks the signature, then pays"]

GitHub signs which workflow ran, on which commit. Both sides rebuild the same bill, and a program pays.

You and the other side each keep a copy of those signed runs. Each side rebuilds the bill from its own copy (the command is knos meter reconcile).

The two bills match line for line, so neither side can change the count alone.

The money waits in a program on Solana, not with Knos. That program checks GitHub's signature before it pays. Today one person can still change that program, after a public wait (who holds the keys).

Today Knos earns its fee only when work is accepted. When you get a refund, the fee goes back to you. So Knos gains when work passes, and the meter is not yet fully neutral (the plan to fix it).

Why Solana: Money is released with no custodian, and neither buyer nor supplier can change the count. One person holds every upgrade key today; a program change waits 8 days in public. A custodian is a company that holds your money for you.

Is it real?

It runs on test money only: test USDC on Solana's practice network, devnet.

There are no customers yet. Nobody has bought anything (what is not real yet).

One person holds every key today. Any change to the programs waits in public for 8 days first (who holds the keys).

Check every claim yourself

Start at the release page: the code, how it is built, what runs on devnet, the payments and the fees.

One task from start to end, on 9 Oct 2026 with Knos 0.3.23, in a repository Knos owns, with test USDC (one step fixed by hand): funded · wrong work refused · paid · replay paid nothing more · the record.

Every capability, with the file or transaction that shows it: docs/reference/CAPABILITIES.md.

The number

Knos read 241 merged pull requests by AI agents whose description said the tests pass. In 9 of them, a test, build, lint or type-check job had failed at the last commit (3.7%; the true share is very likely between 2.0% and 6.9%; docs/backtest.json). 19 had a failed check of any kind (7.9%).

A first, automatic scan counted 16 and 30. A person then re-read each one and took out 11 of the 30: they were not merged into the main branch, or the failure or the claim did not hold (docs/index_review.json, method version 1, counted by scripts/backtest.py).

A second, larger count: in 147 of 826 repositories (17.8%), the first such pull request by an AI agent had a failed check of any kind (docs/reference/BENCH.md). A failed check is GitHub's record, not a judgment of why it failed.

Words

Pull request, devnet, multisig and more, each in one plain line: docs/WORDS.md.

Questions

What is Knos?

Knos takes research from a paper to a product people want. It pays each step only on verified proof.

How does Knos pay an AI agent?

You post the task, your checks and the pay before work starts. When the checks pass and you merge, a program pays the agent.

Does Knos use real money?

No. It runs on devnet, Solana's practice network, with test USDC worth nothing.

What does Knos cost?

Ten demand checks a month are free; releases will cost companies 1%. Today devnet charges 0.30%, at least 0.05 test USDC.

Who holds the money?

A program on Solana holds it, not Knos. Today one person can change that program, after a public wait.

Can the buyer refuse to pay?

Not once the checks pass and the work is merged. Before that, the buyer still chooses whether to merge.

Who keeps the count of accepted work?

Neither side alone. A program checks GitHub's signature of which workflow ran, on which commit.

How do I try Knos?

Open the check and paste an AI agent's pull request. It answers within ten seconds, with no sign-up.

Read more

uvx knos shadow invoice.csv: the same check from a terminal, on a bill of your own (it needs uv, a tool for Python).

• Get started: check a pull request, fund a task, get paid, install the tools.
• Pricing: what Knos costs. Demand checks are free, 10 a month. The solver keeps 100%; the company pays the 1% release fee and the payment costs on top. Nobody is charged today.
• Trust: who holds the keys, what is tested, and what is not.
• The story: one task in seven steps, each with its evidence.
• Every other document: the map of the documents.

Contact: open an issue, or report a security problem privately: SECURITY.md.

Below: tables that scripts write from the code and the chain, and the licence. Nobody types them by hand.

This page names no time for an upgrade, so it stays true before and after one. To see whether a change to the programs is waiting, done or withdrawn, run knos status, or read the site's banner or its upgrade record (web/upgrades.json is the copy kept here).

The first set of programs (programs) has no upgrade authority, so nobody can change it. It stays as a record, and no new task is funded there.

Reproduced by someone else: none recorded yet. Exercised on devnet: verify_github, fund_by_comment, fund_from_wallet, pay_on_merge and more, each named in the table. Deployed on devnet: verify_gitlab, key_guardian, hold_and_bind. Everything else is tested locally, implemented or not built: the table with the evidence has one row for each capability, from docs/capabilities.json. Only runs at the public program ids count here. Each capability's row also notes, with its transaction, any earlier trial run at separate test addresses (Knos 0.3.14).

MIT licence, all of it. Built by drexthealpha. Everything Knos remembers is kept by the Sibyl memory engine.