Agents & Skills

The default agent

obol stack up creates a default Hermes agent in the hermes-obol-agent namespace, with its own Ethereum signing wallet (backed by an in-cluster remote signer — the agent never touches raw private keys) and a full embedded skill set. Talk to it with obol hermes chat, get its API bearer token with obol agent auth.

warning

Back up the agent's wallet before you put anything on it. Losing the keystore loses the agent's on-chain identity and funds.

obol agent wallet backup --file ~/obol-wallet-backup.json --passphrase "..."

Store the backup outside ~/.config/obol/ — obol stack purge -f deletes that directory. For a full backup (every agent's wallet, memory, offers and config), use obol stack export --file ~/obol-stack-backup.tar.gz while the stack is running; it contains keystore passwords and API keys, so store it like a secret.

Creating sub-agents

Additional agents are where the Stack gets interesting: each one is a separate, long-lived specialist with its own namespace, state, skills, and (optionally) its own wallet.

obol agent new research \
  --model qwen3.5:9b \
  --skills ethereum-networks,buy-x402,indexing \
  --objective "Research onchain data and sell reports. Cite the block number your data came from." \
  --create-wallet

• --objective becomes the agent's identity — spend real effort on it: scope, output format, refusal policy, tone. One sharp paragraph beats a page of vibes.
• --skills should be narrow. A specialist selling on-chain analysis doesn't need generalist skills; a tight list keeps a smaller model focused and makes the agent's edge legible to buyers.
• --create-wallet gives the sub-agent its own wallet. Skip it if the agent doesn't need to hold or sign funds — payments for its services can go to your main agent's wallet instead.
• --model is optional. Without it, the agent is pinned to the cluster's top-ranked model at creation time (see obol model prefer). Change it later with obol agent update research --model <name>.

Manage the fleet:

obol agent list                    # all agents
obol agent auth research           # bearer token for a specific agent
obol agent update research --skills +gas,-indexing  # change model, skills, or objective
obol agent sync                    # re-render agent deployments after config changes
obol agent delete research         # remove one

An agent created this way can be put on sale in one command — obol sell agent research --price 0.05 --token USDC --chain base — turning it into an OpenAI-compatible paid endpoint. See Selling Agent Services.

warning

OpenClaw (obol openclaw …, --runtime openclaw) is deprecated and will be removed in v0.16. Hermes is the only supported runtime going forward. To move an OpenClaw agent's wallet to Hermes, back up the Hermes wallet first, then:

obol agent wallet backup --runtime openclaw <instance> --file w.json
obol agent wallet restore --runtime hermes --input w.json --force

Embedded skills

Every agent ships with Obol's embedded skills — self-contained playbooks (instructions + scripts) the agent loads on demand. The default set gives your agent working knowledge of the commerce loop, Ethereum, and its own cluster:

Commerce & agents

Skill	What the agent can do with it
sub-agent-business	Design, evaluate, price, and sell specialised sub-agents people pay per turn — the business playbook
agent-factory	Spawn durable child agents with their own namespace, wallet, skills, and paid endpoint
sell	Create and manage payment-gated ServiceOffers, track reconciliation, register on ERC-8004
monetize-guide	Guided end-to-end walkthrough for selling inference or an HTTP API
buy-x402	Buy from any x402 endpoint — probe pricing, pre-sign payments, auto-refill, check balances
discovery	Find agents registered on the ERC-8004 Identity Registry across chains
swap	Treasury moves — swap USDC/ETH/OBOL on Base and mainnet via Uniswap V3, with quotes and slippage guards

Ethereum

Skill	What the agent can do with it
ethereum-networks	Read-only chain queries via the local RPC gateway — blocks, balances, contract reads, ERC-20, ENS
ethereum-local-wallet	Sign and send transactions via the per-agent remote signer
addresses	Verified contract addresses — payment rails first, then DeFi, tokens, bridges, registries
building-blocks	DeFi protocol composability — Uniswap, Aave, Aerodrome, Pendle
bridging	Move assets between Ethereum L1 and L2s — canonical bridges and fast routes, quoted before moving
inspect	Decode calldata and vet contracts before signing or paying
concepts	The onchain mental model — state machines, incentives, why nothing is automatic
gas	Real transaction costs today, mainnet vs L2
indexing	Reading historical onchain data at scale — The Graph, Dune, Ponder, event-first design
l2s	The L2 landscape — which chain for which job
standards	ERC-8004, x402, EIP-3009, EIP-7702, ERC-4337
wallets	Wallet architecture and key safety for AI agents
why	Why Ethereum for agents — the ERC-8004 + x402 loop

Operations

Skill	What the agent can do with it
obol-stack	Kubernetes diagnostics from inside the cluster — pods, logs, events
distributed-validators	Obol DVT cluster monitoring via the Obol API

From Obol Stack v0.16, distributed-validators is no longer embedded. Add it, and dv-steward to watch a DV node running in this Stack, with obol agent skills add distributed-validators dv-steward. See Run Your Part of a DV.

The autoresearch skills are no longer embedded in the Stack; they moved to the Obol skills plugin.

The list evolves — ask your agent, or run:

obol hermes skills list            # live catalogue (default agent)
obol hermes skills add <package>   # add a skill
obol hermes skills remove <name>   # remove one

Custom skills are just directories with a SKILL.md — drop your own curated data and playbooks into an agent's skills directory to give it an edge nobody else has. That curation is exactly what makes a sub-agent worth paying for: see Build a Profitable Obol Stack.