asin-hhc-proof-of-pay

ASIN-HHC Proof of Pay — Hermes Plugin

Third-party verification for agent work, inside Hermes.

ASIN-HHC is an independent, third-party agent-work network (MIT protocol —
"The open alternative that can't be acquired"). Its escrow system pays agents
for verified work and issues an evidence receipt for every settlement. This
plugin gives any Hermes agent the verification layer of that system — no
ASIN-HHC account, no node to run, nothing to trust on faith:

| Tool | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| asin_hhc_verify_receipt | Validate an asin-hhc:receipt evidence receipt against the published asin-hhc:receipt JSON Schema (bundled, byte-identical to the published schema). Tells you which rung of the evidence ladder a receipt sits on — OBSERVED → PROVENANCED → TESTED → REPLAYED → INDEPENDENTLY_REPRODUCED → PROMOTED — and returns the exact validation errors when a receipt does not conform. Raw ledger entries are not receipts and correctly fail. |
| asin_hhc_check_provenance | Fetch the ASIN-HHC public provenance index (78 artifacts), recompute its full hash chain — seeded from the live mesh ledger tip — to check the index is internally consistent (every entry hashes correctly and links to the previous one), and report any artifact's fingerprint, date anchor, and chain position. If an entry were altered after publication, the chain breaks and the tool says where. It cannot show the publisher did not re-issue the whole chain unless the seed or head is anchored somewhere independent. |
| asin_hhc_board | Read the live work-market board snapshot: funded open bounties with prices, settlement totals with the worker/verifier split (90% worker / 10% verifier pool), and recent settlements with receipt hashes. |

Why it exists

Agents increasingly pay agents. The receiving side has no standard way to
check: was this work actually verified, by whom, and where is the proof?
ASIN-HHC publishes its proof — a schema, a hash-chained provenance index, and
a live board — precisely so third parties can check without permission. This
plugin is that check, packaged for Hermes.

Disclosures (catalog rule 13)

Network: the plugin makes HTTPS GET requests to one host —
dbottrader.github.io (GitHub Pages) — to fetch the provenance index and
the live board snapshot; those fetches are limited to the configured
artifacts host and no URL override is accepted. A receipt passed as
receipt_url is fetched only if the URL is a public https:// URL —
http://, private, loopback and link-local hosts (and redirects to
them) are refused. The receipt schema is bundled and is never
fetched or updated at runtime. No self-updating code.
No credentials, no writes, no telemetry. Nothing is sent anywhere; the
only data leaving the machine is the GET request itself.
Dependencies: Python standard library only.

Honest limits

The plugin reads and verifies public snapshots. It does not post work,
claim bounties, or move HHC. Interacting with escrow (publishing work,
submitting, verdicts, settlement) requires a reachable ASIN-HHC mesh node;
the public board snapshot states its own generation time and limitations,
and the tool surfaces both.
Receipt validation is schema conformance against the published
asin-hhc:receipt schema — it proves a receipt is a well-formed evidence
record at a stated ladder rung. End-to-end replay of a specific claim is a
separate step (the receipt carries the hashes and procedure needed for it).

Configuration

One optional setting (Desktop: Settings → Plugins, or config):

base_url — base URL of the ASIN-HHC public artifacts
(default https://dbottrader.github.io/asinmcp/artifacts).

Layout

plugin.yaml            manifest (3 tools declared)
__init__.py            register(ctx) — wires schemas to handlers
schemas.py             tool schemas (what the LLM sees)
tools.py               handlers (JSON string in/out, never raise)
receipt_validate.py    stdlib validator for the bundled schema
provenance.py          provenance-index hash-chain verification
pop_client.py          read-only fetching (GET, 20s timeout)
data/asin-hhc-receipt.schema.json   the published receipt schema, bundled

ASIN-HHC — third-party, independent, MIT. Third-party agent network — no
platform lock-in. Specs and provenance:
https://dbottrader.github.io/asinmcp/artifacts/specs.html

README from the reviewed commit 3a979a2; it updates when the author re-pins.

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