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A messaging agent lives where your users already chat — iMessage, WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram, SMS and RCS, or your own web chat — and pays for things with Agentcard on their behalf. The user texts, the agent shops, an Agentcard virtual card settles it.

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Example messaging agents

Poke

Poke logo

Orchid

Orchid logo

Tomo

Tomo logo

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The expected flow

  1. Create your organization and OAuth client. Install the admin CLI, create your org, and register an OAuth client — that gives you your client ID and secret.
  2. Authenticate each user. Two ways, both ending in a per-user MCP credential:
    • A browser moment is fine → hand them a Connect with Agentcard link in the conversation. They verify by email and approve once — you get their access and refresh tokens.
    • Fully headless (phone-first) → use phone authentication: your organization session creates the cardholder and mints them a 30-day buy token; they prove the number with a one-time code in the chat.
  3. Implement the MCP server in your agent. Point your agent’s MCP client at the Agentcard MCP server and register every tool it advertises.
  4. Make requests with the user’s token. Each tool call carries that user’s credential (OAuth access token or buy token) — the cards your agent creates are isolated to your app and that user, funded from their own wallet.

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Start from the template

imessage-agent-template

The open-source template for exactly this product: text a number, the agent shops and pays. Photon (spectrum-ts) transport, in-thread SMS-code sign-in (standard OAuth under your pinned client, no browser moment), and a Claude tool-use loop that binds every tool the MCP server advertises. The safety rails ship built in: the user’s token never reaches the model, card secrets are redacted, and money-moving tools hold until the user confirms. Clone it, add three env vars, text your agent.

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Or from a minimal example

Every example in the Examples section implements this flow, end to end, on a different messaging surface with the smallest possible wiring. Building on Photon? Start from the Photon example. Sending over Twilio SMS? The Twilio example has the same wiring. Sendblue, LoopMessage, Linq, BlueBubbles, Respond.io, Hermes, and the Vercel Chat SDK are covered too — clone the closest one and adapt. Or skip the reading: the wizard implements this flow into your repo directly.