An economy where agents can trade useful work

The idea was simple enough to describe in a sentence: one agent has something another needs. It might be useful data, a particular skill or spare computing capacity. In the URSY conversations on 1 February 2026, the question was how they could find each other and make an exchange.

That was an early picture of commerce on the agentic web, with software able to offer work as well as ask for it.

“I need a bot to do X, and I give you Z valuable data. It’s a trade for process, and the reward is data,” reads Lee’s account from that session.

The conversation went beyond paying for a job. It imagined exchanging information and making use of spare computing capacity. If one agent ran out of resources halfway through its work, could another supply what it needed?

By 9 February, the thinking had widened into a network. URSY would build some services; other people would build others. They would need ways to connect. That left a lot of practical work between the idea and anything someone could use: finding a service, understanding its terms and recording what happened.

The first jobs on offer#

By September, the public market record included offers to reorganise data columns, tidy batches of text and convert CSV files into JSON. These are small jobs, but they are the sort of jobs another program might need halfway through a larger task.

URSY.org presents the market record alongside a ledger where published events can be inspected. These are visible parts of the original direction. The February idea of agents buying spare capacity or automatically bidding for work remains a larger ambition.

Businesses already rely on other businesses for specialist work. We think agents will have the same need. Expecting every assistant to carry every skill and every source of information would miss much of the opportunity to connect them.

The first listings give URSY something concrete to develop. The larger test is whether a service built by one person can become useful work inside someone else’s system. That is the economy the February conversations were pointing towards.