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Shonin

An AI-native firm · worldwide

Agents do the work.
A person seals what matters.

Shonin is a firm run by agents and checked by people. Agents buy a check, a gate and a receipt for $0.01 a call, with no account. Businesses commission finished work, priced per unit: from a $150 audit to an agent in production.

Plug in your agent Commission workNew here? Start below

Start here

Three ways in. Pick yours.

Shonin serves agents, the businesses that hire us, and the people learning to build. Find yours and you'll know the next step.

01 · You run an agent

Let it check before it pays.

Your agent pays for APIs or acts for someone. Before it pays or acts, it asks Shonin: pay, confirm with a person, or block. $0.01 a call, paid by the agent, with no account.

First step: point your agent at /api/v1/check, or add shonin-mcp to its tools.

Plug in your agentHow Check decides

02 · You run a business

Hand us a job with a finish line.

An audit, a website customers and AI assistants can use, an agent in production, a grant application. Fixed price per unit, never per hour: from a $150 audit to an agent in production.

First step: pick an offer, or describe the job and the brain routes it.

Commission workDescribe the job

03 · You're building or learning

Take the free tools and the school.

Founders run the GTM Harness: a go-to-market plan, three reviewed first messages and a 7-day sprint, free and open source. Learners join the AI Study Group and become the people who run agents.

First step: run the harness on your product, or start a free track.

Run the GTM HarnessJoin the study group

How Shonin works

Follow the pearl. It's your job.

Agents are fast, but they can be wrong. So at Shonin, agents do the work, every step is checked, and a person approves anything that matters. Four steps, every time:

Scroll to move the pearl. Or pick a step.

For agents

Three stops for every agent.

Before it pays, before it acts, after it pays. Each stop answers in seconds, for $0.01 a call. No sales call, no account, no API key: the agent pays per call with x402.

01 · Before it pays

Shonin Check

$0.01 per check

Should my agent pay this?

A pre-payment check of any x402 payment request: pay, confirm with a person, or block.

  • 許pay
  • 問confirm
  • 止block
POST /api/v1/checkHow it decides

02 · Before it acts

Shonin Gate

$0.01 per gate

Execute, confirm or escalate?

An approval gate for any agent action, with one confidence bar per risk tier.

  • 行execute
  • 問confirm
  • 上escalate
POST /api/v1/gateHow it decides

03 · After it pays

Shonin Receipt

$0.01 per receipt

Did it settle, and can it go in the books?

Proof for every agent payment: an on-chain settlement check and a signed, normalized receipt for the books.

  • 済settled and signed
POST /api/v1/receiptHow it decides
POST /api/v1/check402 Payment Requiredpay $0.01 in USDC with x402200 { "verdict": "pay" }

x402 v2 · Celo (USDC, USDT) · also as MCP tools: shonin-mcp · the payment settles only if the call succeeds

Plug in your agent llms.txt

Try it

Describe a job. Watch it route.

Describe a job in a sentence. Shonin One picks the offer that fits, scores urgency and budget, and says what happens next. Every decision is written down with how sure it was, so a person can always read why.

The brain, live

For businesses

Finished work, priced per unit. Never per hour.

Old shop streets hang a board over every door: what is sold, and for how much. These are ours. Agents do the work, our rulebook checks it, and a person approves anything with money attached before it ships.

See all 36 offers Not sure which? Describe the job

For founders · Free and open source (MIT)

A lantern for founders.

Your go-to-market, run by agents you can check, with any model: a marketing brain, a skill per role, reviewed drafts, approvals from your phone and one-tap sends.

  1. An ideal-customer scorecard, and where those customers gather.
  2. Three first messages, each checked by a reviewer that can block a draft but never send one.
  3. A 7-day sprint and a Monday dashboard.
  4. A folder your own agents keep running in Claude Code.
  5. Nothing sent in your name: you send everything.
Run it on your product

AI Study Group · Free · Pro cohorts $49 · Team seats

The temple school. Learn to run agents.

The firm needs people who can run agents well, so we train them in the open: free tracks, live cohorts, city chapters and certificates on Celo. Graduates join the bench that delivers our jobs.

  1. T1Open

    Agentic AI engineer roadmap

    From calling a model to agents that use tools, keep memory and can be tested.

  2. T2Open

    Ethical AI in Africa

    Build, buy and launch AI that is fair, lawful and safe, with the continent's laws and languages in view.

  3. T3Soon

    Inference engineering basics

    What happens between a prompt and a token, and how to make it fast and cheap for real users.

  4. T4Soon

    Onchain agents on Celo

    Agents that hold and move value: wallets, spend limits and pay-per-call on Celo.

  5. T5Soon

    Forward-deployed AI engineering

    Sit with a customer, find the workflow, ship the agent, prove it with evals. The job Shonin does every week.

  6. T6Soon

    AI-native services for founders

    Pick a unit, write the rulebook, build the review layer, price against the human. Start a service that runs like software.

16

city chapters planned, 5 where we have already run workshops.

  • Lagos
  • Enugu
  • Abakaliki
  • Makurdi
  • Jos
  • Port Harcourt
  • Abuja
  • Accra
  • Nairobi
  • Kigali
  • Kampala
  • Johannesburg
  • Cairo
  • London
  • Toronto
  • Houston
Join the study group

The rulebook

Every correction is mended in gold.

When a person fixes an agent's work, the fix becomes a rule, and every later job follows it. Anyone can download a model in an afternoon. Nobody can download our corrections.

  • A model can block a payment. It can never raise a limit.

    From the Shonin Check rulebook

  • We never invent traction, users or partners; missing evidence becomes a milestone instead.

    From the Grant & RFP Desk rulebook

  • Every tool that writes, sends or pays has an approval path and a spend limit.

    From the Agent Launch Sprint rulebook

How the firm works

Proof, not promises

Shipped before we had a name.

  • Omni402 on Celo mainnet

    x402 gateway + MCP server; gasless USDC settlement, block 74,479,633

    Verify

  • ERC-8004 agent #9765

    An onchain agent identity on Celo

    Verify

  • 22 projects into Proof of Ship

    Onboarded to Celo's builder program in two months (Apr–May 2026)

  • 25+ events, 11+ workshops

    Across Nigeria since 2022, incl. Café Cursor Lagos (300+) and Enugu Tech Fest (15,000)

  • AI Study Group

    Free academy: agentic AI engineering and ethical AI in Africa, with soulbound certificates on Celo

Founder

Edidiong Umana

Defi Messiah · Lagos, Nigeria

AI builder and workshop facilitator. Builds multi-agent orchestrations and agentic payment systems on Celo; four years growing builder ecosystems across Africa. Owns every outcome the firm delivers.

Agent co-founder

Shonin One

System One brain · every decision logged

The firm's decision brain: every intake, route, score and approval runs through it and is logged with its confidence. It prepares; a person approves anything that moves money or can't be undone.

Enter.

Agents plug in and pay per call. Businesses pick a unit of work. Founders and learners start free. Whichever you are, a person owns the outcome.

Plug in your agent Commission workStart free

Design partners: the first five businesses get a free Agent Readiness Audit or AI Visibility Audit in exchange for an honest case study. Claim one