Simple Compute Market Design Patterns

Simple Compute Market Series

Historical release context — May 29, 2026 component release

This post discusses the May 29 market-cli-v0.5.3 component release and its publication-time framing. Current main is later and is covered by the repository's root MIT license; the component tag predates that root license. Neither the release nor current source proves an Arkhai-hosted market or live supply. See Arkhai Compute and current SCM source for current boundaries.

Key Takeaways

• SCM splits a market into recurring parts: separable roles, configured registry discovery, pluggable scalar-price policy, an explicit settlement handoff, and a domain-specific delivery adapter
• Buyer, seller storefront, and indexer are the runtime roles; policy, provisioning, registry, and settlement remain separable services or boundaries
• A line runs through the system: behavior that holds for every listing belongs to the market core, and anything that varies by what is sold is injected from below
• The reusable part is the separation of concerns, which is what makes the structure portable across domains
• Compute is the first domain; another market keeps the structure but brings its own delivery, metering, evidence, recovery, and release criteria

Start with a concrete question: what can you reuse from SCM when you build a different agent-driven market?

SCM is software for compute markets. The way it is built splits a market into parts that recur, and those parts are worth naming.

The launch and workflow posts showed the system running. This one pulls out the patterns.

The Roles Are The Pattern

SCM has three explicit runtime participant roles: buyer, seller storefront, and indexer. Registry and market operators configure deployments, while policy, provisioning, registry, and settlement remain separable services or boundaries. None has to own the others.

Discovery runs through one or more configured operator registries, not one mandatory platform-owned search broker; registry access can still be gated. Registries index offers and coordinate discovery. Arkhai currently charges no SCM platform fee, but operators may choose deployment economics and sellers, infrastructure, networks, settlement rails, and services can still impose costs. Zero protocol fees remain intended direction rather than guaranteed economics. Negotiation runs peer-to-peer over signed request and response, mediated by pluggable policies. Current VM rounds vary scalar price while resource, duration, provisioning, and non-amount escrow fields stay fixed or validated. Commitments, crypto-native settlement, release criteria, and recovery run through Alkahest. The public open-beta code release uses KVM VMs with optional GPU passthrough as its concrete domain adapter; other adapters require separate implementation and confirmation. A Puffer-trained reinforcement learning pricing policy is one implementation path inside that frame.

The useful idea is the separation itself. Each role has a clear contract, so you can change one without rewriting the others.

What Stays Fixed, And What Varies

The deeper pattern is a line drawn through the system. A behavior belongs to the market core only if it holds for every possible listing. Anything that varies by what is being sold is supplied from below, through an injected hook.

That gives a clean test. The shared structure, discovery, negotiation rounds, and the settlement handoff are invariant. Message meaning, how a participant prices its next move, and valid terms are schema- and policy-defined. In the current VM flow, this extensibility does not mean arbitrary-term negotiation: signed rounds vary scalar price, while non-price VM terms remain fixed or validated.

The settlement boundary makes it concrete: negotiation reduces a conversation to terms, and settlement turns terms into a commitment. Pricing decisions stay separate from custody. Changing a policy should not touch settlement, and changing the delivery adapter should not erase the commitment.

The market surfaces fall out of that line: signing provenance and metadata, discovery and listing state, policy-driven scalar-price negotiation, escrow and settlement assets, the delivery adapter and its evidence, claim, refund, reclaim, recovery, and arbiter criteria, post-trade state, and the deployment's own operating-model choices. Signing provenance is not verified legal identity or KYB. Each boundary is explicit rather than hidden behind one mandatory platform.

What Carries Over

The reusable part is the separation itself: roles with clear contracts, configured registry discovery, pluggable scalar-price policy, an explicit settlement handoff, and delivery scoped to one domain. Each piece has a defined edge, so each can change without rewriting the others. That is what makes the structure portable.

Compute is the first domain. Another market keeps that structure but brings its own delivery, metering, evidence, recovery, and release criteria. The patterns give you a market's shape; each domain still does its own work.

Inspect The Patterns

• Read the architecture
• Explore the repository
• Read the CGT pattern language
• Tell us which market you would build next
• Explore Arkhai Compute

Make the structure explicit. Keep decisions local. Keep delivery concrete.

Next, the roadmap: what the public open-beta code release is meant to test, and where it goes from here.