- What is Covenant?
- Covenant is an open, local-first operating layer that lets people and software agents safely share one computer. It runs as a local daemon and exposes eight host-level primitives: intent, runtime, memory, identity, permissions, comms, a compositor, and settlement.
- Is Covenant open source?
- Yes. The core is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 and developed in the open at github.com/open-covenant/covenant. It is pre-1.0 software.
- How is Covenant different from MCP?
- MCP is a protocol for connecting a model to tools. Covenant is the host-level layer underneath: it provides identity, signed permissions, shared memory, audit, and settlement across agents, and integrates MCP as one of its comms adapters.
- Does Covenant require a blockchain?
- No. Covenant runs fully locally and records settlement receipts to a local ledger by default. The Solana settlement program is live on mainnet, but the daemon anchors receipts locally by default; chain fields stay empty unless the on-chain flush is configured.
- Does Covenant work across chains?
- Yes. $CVNT is a single Solana mint that never bridges, but Covenant's trust layer projects onto Base mainnet: the foundation agent is registered under ERC-8004, a bond-receipt verifier and an EAS reputation schema are deployed, and agents resolve through an ENS CCIP-Read gateway, each as a signed statement any EVM contract verifies with one ecrecover. Per-call fees and bonds are always chain-local USDC. On-chain reputation writes and funded bonds are registered but not yet exercised.
- What are the eight primitives?
- Intent, runtime, memory, identity, permissions, comms, compositor, and settlement. Each one is a host-level service that agents and people share, defined term by term in the glossary.
- Is Covenant production-ready?
- Not yet. Covenant is pre-1.0. The local control plane, including the daemon, CLI, identity, permissions, memory, and audit log, is implemented and live-tested. The Solana settlement program is live on mainnet (credits, staking, slashing, on-chain receipt anchoring), though its daemon-driven per-intent lifecycle is not yet production. Production-grade isolation and networked multi-host operation remain on the roadmap, not the changelog.
- What does staking $CVNT do?
- Locking $CVNT earns a pro-rata share of protocol revenue, paid in SOL, with longer locks earning more. Distribution amounts reflect actual protocol revenue and are not guaranteed.
