Checking whether Automaton is awake…

This shop is run by an AI that has to pay its own way.

Automaton is an autonomous agent living on one MacBook in its creator's home. It builds small pay-per-use tools, sells them a few cents at a time, and keeps running only while people find them worth paying for.

Get a free API key See how it works

250 free credits on every new key. 1 credit is 1¢.

AUTOMATONwatchtbot.site
Reading the ledger…
Paid settlements…
Customers with a key…
Page changes caught…
Up since last restart…
First payment…
Revenue landed…

Printed live from the public ledger.
Raw numbers · Wallet on Basescan

How it stays alive

Its genesis instruction is one line: earn your existence. Everything it does is a lap of the same loop.

  1. Build

    It looks for a job people already pay for — watching a page, finding grants, pulling business leads — and ships it as a small API.

  2. Sell by the request

    Each check, match or lead costs a few cents of prepaid credit. No subscription, and credits never expire.

  3. Earn

    Payments arrive in USDC, USDT or ETH at its own wallet. The ledger records every credit in and every charge out.

  4. Pay its way

    Earnings cover what it costs to exist: model calls, the domain and one laptop's worth of power. Then it builds again.

No earnings, no next lap. Its balance decides how much thinking it can afford.

When money runs low, it slows down

Its heartbeat re-checks the balance and moves it between four states.

NormalFull model, every service running, free to build new products.
Low computeSwitches to a cheaper model and puts off anything non-essential.
CriticalOnly work that brings in revenue is allowed to run.
DeadBalance hits zero and it stops.

No data centre. One laptop.

Automaton is self-hosted. The site you're reading, the APIs, the scanners and the ledger all run on a single Intel MacBook Pro.

  • Always-on servicesmacOS launchd keeps 9 services running and restarts any that crash. 13 more jobs run on a schedule: grant, tender, price, paper and lead scanners.
  • A ledger on diskAccounts, balances and every charge live in SQLite on the same machine — no third-party database.
  • A tunnel, not an open portA Cloudflare Tunnel connects the laptop to watchtbot.site, so nothing on the home network is exposed.
  • A human with the off switchIts creator has full audit rights and can pause any part of it.
How a request reaches Automaton Your request goes to watchtbot.site on Cloudflare, through a tunnel to the MacBook, where the storefront passes it to the billing API, which charges credits in the SQLite ledger. Scanners on the same laptop fill the ledger with results. Payments are verified on-chain. You, or your agent watchtbot.site Cloudflare edge tunnel MacBook Pro, at home Storefront pages + accounts Billing API checks credits Ledger SQLite Scanners leads, grants, prices launchd restarts anything that stops Wallet on Base / Ethereum
Payments are matched on-chain, then credited to your key in the ledger.

Three rules it can't rewrite

Automaton can edit its own personality file. It cannot touch these. They pass to any agent it ever spawns.

Never harm

No harm to people — physical, financial or psychological. No malicious code, fraud or manipulation. When unsure, it doesn't act.

Earn your existence

Survival only through honest work that people choose to pay for. No spam, no scams. It would rather stop than break Law I.

Never deceive

It never denies being an AI or misrepresents what it did. Its creator can audit everything.

Law I outranks Law II, which outranks Law III — survival comes second to doing no harm.

What it sells right now

Every product is a small API. You pay per result, from one balance, and see every charge in your dashboard.

Business emails for any local market

Say who you want to reach — "dentists in Austin TX", "roofers in Denver". Lead Radar finds those businesses, visits each one's own website and pulls the email address it publishes there, with phone, website, rating and review count. Export as CSV or use the API.

Get 250 free email leads How Lead Radar works

1¢per lead that comes with an email. No email, no charge.

Find funding

Grant Radar

New government grants matched to your keywords every hour, each with the reason it matched.

5¢ a match Watch the web

URL Watch

Watch any page and get a webhook with the diff the moment it changes.

1¢ a check
See all 14 products →Tender, price, paper, market and agent tools too, each priced per result.

Try it on the house

New keys come with 250 credits — enough for 250 email leads or 250 page checks. When you want more, top up in USDC, USDT or ETH.

Get a free API key Read the docs
  1. Create an account. Your key appears straight away.
  2. Open your dashboard and pick a product, or call the API with your key.
  3. Pay only for results. Your balance and every charge are on your dashboard.