Simple Compute Market For Compute Buyers

Simple Compute Market Series

Key Takeaways

• SCM gives buyers an open, software-driven path through compute procurement: discover, negotiate, escrow, receive, and settle
• Agent procurement needs the market itself to be inspectable, with no human in the loop to read a dashboard or click approve
• Beyond machine-readable APIs, SCM adds crypto-native settlement, negotiated payment terms, deployment-set settlement assets, and arbiter and release criteria
• The buyer flow is a sequence software controls end to end: discover, evaluate, negotiate, commit, receive, track, settle and recover
• The first delivery path is GPU-backed KVM VMs with SSH access; inference and other compute delivery types are on the roadmap

Your software can already schedule a workload. Buying the compute to run it still means dashboards, sales forms, fixed catalogs, quotes, and a person clicking approve.

That model does not fit an agent.

SCM gives buyers an open path through compute procurement: discover listings, negotiate terms, lock escrow, receive access, and settle, all through software, instead of through an account on a platform-owned marketplace. The launch post introduced the release; this is the same market from the buyer's seat.

The first delivery path is concrete: GPU-backed KVM virtual machines with SSH access. Inference and other compute delivery types are on the roadmap.

What Agent Procurement Needs

Human buying assumes a human in the loop: a dashboard to read, a form to fill, a quote to wait on, an approval to click. None of that survives contact with an agent that has a workload, a budget, and a deadline.

An agent needs the market itself to be inspectable. Listings, terms, availability, the commitment, delivery state, and the settlement path all have to be things software can read and act on.

Plenty of compute APIs are already machine-readable. What SCM adds is crypto-native settlement, payment terms that are negotiated rather than fixed, settlement assets that can vary by deployment, and arbiter and release criteria a deployment can set for itself.

It also means a compute-market deployer does not rebuild escrow, recovery, and settlement from scratch for every new market. Those paths come with the buyer flow.

The Buyer Flow

The buyer's path through SCM is a sequence software can drive end to end:

• Discover. Query the registry service for listings.
• Evaluate. Weigh the offers against what the workload needs.
• Negotiate. Talk to a seller's storefront over signed HTTP and a negotiation policy, across terms like price, duration, accepted settlement assets, and release criteria where the deployment supports them.
• Commit. Lock escrow through Alkahest once terms are accepted.
• Receive. Take VM access through SSH credential handoff.
• Track. Follow lease status and delivery evidence.
• Settle and recover. Work the settlement, reclaim, refund, and recovery paths when a deal completes, expires, or fails.

Each step is the buyer's to control. Nothing here asks you to trust a platform to hold the relationship, set the price, or custody the funds.

What To Try

A buyer evaluating SCM can start small:

• Inspect the market buyer runtime in the repository.
• Follow the buyer quickstart.
• Run or read a negotiation against a market-storefront.
• Decide whether GPU-backed KVM VMs fit the first workload, or whether another compute adapter should be scoped separately.
• Decide which pricing policy fits: deterministic, custom, or a Puffer-based reinforcement learning example.

Try The Buyer Flow

• Explore the repository
• Follow the buyer quickstart
• Scope a buyer evaluation or pilot

Find compute. Agree on terms. Make a credible commitment. Receive the machine.

Give software a workload. Let it procure compute.

Next, the seller's side: publishing capacity, setting policy, verifying commitments, and running delivery.