Build Your First AI Agent Contract

If you like video tutorials, here is one of our latest workshops on building your first AI Agent Contract. In this tutorial, you will learn:

• How to get an OpenAI API Key at https://red-pill.ai

• Clone the AI Agent Contract template repo

• Build and test your Agent Script

• Launch and interact with your Agent Script through the Phala Agent Gateway

Agent Script executes in TEE Agent VM on Phala Network

The RedPill AI Agent template is a MINIMAL template to build an AI Agent that can be hosted on Phala Network's decentralized hosting protocol. Unlike Vercel or other FaaS, it allows you to publish your AI Agent compiled code to IPFS and hosts it on a fully decentralized FaaS cloud with the following benefits:

• 💨 Ship Fast: Build and ship with familiar toolchain in minutes

• ⛑️ Secure: Execution guarded by rock solid TEE

• 🔒 Private: Host API keys and user privacy at ease

• 💎 Unstoppable: Powered by IPFS and Phala's 40k+ decentralized TEE workers

• 🔥 @hono/tiny Support: a small, simple, and ultrafast web framework built on Web Standards.
• 🧪 Vite Test Framework: Vite Testing Framework support, but you're free to change the test framework to your desire.

We recommend using @hono/tiny to avoid a large bundle size and the 20MB final artifact limitation.

This guide will focus on the following topics:

• Build and Deploy Your AI Agent Contract

  • Build and deploy your Agent Contract that is deployed to IPFS and served through the Phala Agent Gateway executed on Phala Network

• Use/Interact with Your AI Agent Contract

  • The Agent Gateway will fetch the Agent Contract code/prompt located on IPFS.

  • Interact with your agent hosted through Phala's Agent Gateway (https://wapo-testnet.phala.network/ipfs/<CID>).

Getting Started

Prepare

Clone git repo or use degit to get the source code.

git

git clone https://github.com/Phala-Network/ai-agent-template-redpill.git

degit

npx degit github:Phala-Network/ai-agent-template-redpill#main ai-agent-template-redpill

Install dependencies

npm install

Testing Locally

Create .env file with the default ThirdWeb API key for publishing your Agent Contract to IPFS

cp .env.example .env

Get an API Key from Redpill

Note

There is a default RedPill API Key provided in the .env.example file. This API key is rate limited and if you run into an error that displays Insufficient funds, reach out to the Phala Team on discord.

• Go to https://red-pill.ai/dashboard and claim your API Key by swapping some ETH for wGPT at https://app.uniswap.org/explore/tokens/base/0x74F62Bc1961028C22b8080961c6534f4eDD49D6C

• Video Tutorial: https://youtu.be/ZoJwbLNhbWE

In default.json file replace YOUR_API_KEY with your API Key. The default has a rate limit. If you want access to a RedPill code, reach out to the Phala Team.

{
  "apiKey": "YOUR_REDPILL_API_KEY"
}

Build your Agent

npm run build

Test your Agent locally

npm run test

Expected Test Results

Now you are ready to publish your agent, add secrets, and interact with your agent in the following steps:
- Execute: 'npm run publish-agent'
- Set secrets: 'npm run set-secrets'
- Go to the url produced by setting the secrets (e.g. https://wapo-testnet.phala.network/ipfs/QmPQJD5zv3cYDRM25uGAVjLvXGNyQf9Vonz7rqkQB52Jae?key=b092532592cbd0cf)

 ✓ tests/index.test.ts (2) 6157ms
   ✓ Test RedPill AI Agent Contract (2) 6156ms
     ✓ GET Test: Pass chatQuery through URL Query 2722ms
     ✓ POST Test: Pass chatQuery and model through body of POST request 3434ms

 Test Files  1 passed (1)
      Tests  2 passed (2)
   Start at  16:30:03
   Duration  6.36s (transform 23ms, setup 6ms, collect 31ms, tests 6.16s, environment 0ms, prepare 39ms)

Upload your compiled AI Agent code to IPFS.

npm run publish-agent

Upon a successful upload, the command should show the URL to access your AI Agent.

- Uploading file to IPFS. This may take a while depending on file sizes.

✔ Successfully uploaded file to IPFS.
✔ Files stored at the following IPFS URI: ipfs://QmaUbZgNz9dZ5eGm87DDqegRtcBV7RdosxizYQcfe2bHRc
✔ Open this link to view your upload: https://b805a9b72767504353244e0422c2b5f9.ipfscdn.io/ipfs/bafybeifukvkuyztltpq2gi55nswzvwkpgrwrogwykm4ymoqeymh2pxoukm/

Agent Contract deployed at: https://wapo-testnet.phala.network/ipfs/QmaUbZgNz9dZ5eGm87DDqegRtcBV7RdosxizYQcfe2bHRc

If your agent requires secrets, ensure to do the following:
1) Edit the ./secrets/default.json file or create a new JSON file in the ./secrets folder and add your secrets to it.
2) Run command: 'npm run set-secrets' or 'npm run set-secrets [path-to-json-file]'
Logs folder created.
Deployment information updated in ./logs/latestDeployment.json

Note that your latest deployment information will be logged to in file ./logs/latestDeployment.json. This file is updated every time you publish a new Agent Contract to IPFS. This file is also used to get the IPFS CID of your Agent Contract when setting secrets for your Agent Contract.

Here is an example:

{
  "date": "2024-08-29T18:47:55.108Z",
  "cid": "QmaUbZgNz9dZ5eGm87DDqegRtcBV7RdosxizYQcfe2bHRc",
  "url": "https://wapo-testnet.phala.network/ipfs/QmaUbZgNz9dZ5eGm87DDqegRtcBV7RdosxizYQcfe2bHRc"
}

Did Thirdweb fail to publish?

If ThirdWeb fails to publish, please signup for your own ThirdWeb account to publish your Agent Contract to IPFS. Signup or login at https://thirdweb.com/dashboard/

Whenever you log into ThirdWeb, create a new API key and replace the default API Key with yours in the .env file.

THIRDWEB_API_KEY="YOUR_THIRDWEB_API_KEY"

Accessing The Published Agent

Once published, your AI Agent is available at the URL: https://wapo-testnet.phala.network/ipfs/<your-cid>. You can get it from the "Publish to IPFS" step.

You can test it with curl.

curl https://wapo-testnet.phala.network/ipfs/<your-cid>

Adding Secrets

By default, all the compiled JS code is visible for anyone to view if they look at IPFS CID. This makes private info like API keys, signer keys, etc. vulnerable to be stolen. To protect devs from leaking keys, we have added a field called secret in the Request object. It allows you to store secrets in a vault for your AI Agent to access.

To add your secrets,

1. Edit the default.json file or create a new JSON file in the ./secrets folder and add your secrets to it.

{
  "apiKey": "YOUR_REDPILL_API_KEY"
}

1. Run command to set the secrets

npm run set-secrets
# or if you have a custom JSON file
npm run set-secrets <path-to-json-file>

Expected output:

Use default secrets...
Storing secrets...
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100   199    0    68  100   131    121    234 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--   356
{"token":"5d9faaed6be5414a","key":"a3a8a4ef2c057d5c","succeed":true}

Secrets set successfully. Go to the URL below to interact with your agent:
https://wapo-testnet.phala.network/ipfs/QmaUbZgNz9dZ5eGm87DDqegRtcBV7RdosxizYQcfe2bHRc?key=a3a8a4ef2c057d5c
Log entry added to secrets.log

Note that all your secrets will be logged in file ./logs/secrets.log. This file is updated every time you add new secrets to your Agent Contract. If you have not published an Agent Contract, yet, this command will fail since there is not a CID to map the secrets to.

Here is an example:

2024-08-29T18:54:16.643Z, CID: [QmaUbZgNz9dZ5eGm87DDqegRtcBV7RdosxizYQcfe2bHRc], Token: [5d9faaed6be5414a], Key: [a3a8a4ef2c057d5c], URL: [https://wapo-testnet.phala.network/ipfs/QmaUbZgNz9dZ5eGm87DDqegRtcBV7RdosxizYQcfe2bHRc?key=a3a8a4ef2c057d5c]

The API returns a token and a key. The key is the id of your secret. It can be used to specify which secret you are going to pass to your frame. The token can be used by the developer to access the raw secret. You should never leak the token.

To verify the secret, run the following command where key and token are replaced with the values from adding your secret to the vault.

curl https://wapo-testnet.phala.network/vaults/<key>/<token>

Expected output:

{"data":{"apiKey":"<REDPILL_API_KEY>"},"succeed":true}

Accessing Your Secrets in Your Code

let vault: Record<string, string> = {}
try {
  vault = JSON.parse(process.env.secret || '')
} catch (e) {
  console.error(e)
  return c.json({ error: "Failed to parse secrets" })
}
const apiKey = (vault.apiKey) ? vault.apiKey as string : 'SALTY_BAE'

Handling Requests

Check the Hono docs for information on accessing URL queries or body from a post request.

We recommend using @hono/tiny to avoid a large bundle size and the 20MB final artifact limitation.

Example

// Access query value for a URL query named `type`
let queries = c.req.queries() || {}
const getType = (queries.type) ? queries.type[0] as string : ''
// Access body from post request
const data = await c.req.json()

Debugging Your Agent

To debug your agent, you can use the following command:

curl https://wapo-testnet.phala.network/logs/all/ipfs/<CID>

After executing this command then you should see some output in the terminal to show the logs of requests to your agent.

2024-09-04T03:18:34.758Z [95f5ec53-3d71-4bb5-bbb6-66065211102c] [REPORT] END Request: Duration: 166ms
2024-09-04T03:18:34.758Z [95f5ec53-3d71-4bb5-bbb6-66065211102c] [INFO] 'Is signature valid? ' true
2024-09-04T03:18:34.758Z [95f5ec53-3d71-4bb5-bbb6-66065211102c] [INFO] 'Verifying Signature with PublicKey ' '0xC1BF8dB4D06416c43Aca3deB289CF7CC0aAFF540'
2024-09-04T03:18:34.758Z [95f5ec53-3d71-4bb5-bbb6-66065211102c] [REPORT] START Request: GET /ipfs/QmfLpQjxAMsppUX9og7xpmfSKZAZ8zuWJV5g42DmpASSWz?key=0e26a64a1e805bfd&type=verify&data=tintinland%20message%20to%20sign&signature=0x34c4d8c83406e7a292ecc940d60b34c9b11024db10a8872c753b9711cd6dbc8f746da8be9bc2ae0898ebf8f49f48c2ff4ba2a851143c3e4b371647eed32f707b1b
2024-09-04T03:17:15.238Z [768b6fda-f9f1-463f-86bd-a948e002bf80] [REPORT] END Request: Duration: 183ms
2024-09-04T03:17:15.238Z [768b6fda-f9f1-463f-86bd-a948e002bf80] [INFO] 'Signature: 0x34c4d8c83406e7a292ecc940d60b34c9b11024db10a8872c753b9711cd6dbc8f746da8be9bc2ae0898ebf8f49f48c2ff4ba2a851143c3e4b371647eed32f707b1b'
2024-09-04T03:17:15.238Z [768b6fda-f9f1-463f-86bd-a948e002bf80] [INFO] 'Signing data [tintinland message to sign] with Account [0xC1BF8dB4D06416c43Aca3deB289CF7CC0aAFF540]'
2024-09-04T03:17:15.238Z [768b6fda-f9f1-463f-86bd-a948e002bf80] [REPORT] START Request: GET /ipfs/QmfLpQjxAMsppUX9og7xpmfSKZAZ8zuWJV5g42DmpASSWz?key=0e26a64a1e805bfd&type=sign&data=tintinland%20message%20to%20sign
2024-09-04T03:16:38.507Z [3717d307-bff0-4fc0-bc98-8f66c33dd46f] [REPORT] END Request: Duration: 169ms
2024-09-04T03:16:38.507Z [3717d307-bff0-4fc0-bc98-8f66c33dd46f] [REPORT] START Request: GET /ipfs/QmfLpQjxAMsppUX9og7xpmfSKZAZ8zuWJV5g42DmpASSWz?key=0e26a64a1e805bfd
2024-09-04T03:15:00.375Z [793f58f9-f24f-4580-8ebc-04debb7d727f] [REPORT] END Request: Duration: 158ms
2024-09-04T03:15:00.375Z [793f58f9-f24f-4580-8ebc-04debb7d727f] [REPORT] START Request: GET /ipfs/QmfLpQjxAMsppUX9og7xpmfSKZAZ8zuWJV5g42DmpASSWz?key=0e26a64
a1e805bfd

To create logs in your Agent Contract, you can use the following syntax in your index.ts file.

// info logs
console.log('info log message!')
// error logs
console.error('error log message!')

For more information check the MDN docs on console object.

Run a Local Testnet With Docker

Run a local testnet with docker support. All you need to do to get a local testnet started is run:

Running the local testnet may return an error if port 8000 is already in use.

npm run dev

Make a Request to Your Local Build

# GET request
curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/local
# GET request with URL queries
curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/local?query1=one&query2=two
# POST request
curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/local -X POST -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{"foo": "bar"}'

Add Secrets to Your Local Build

curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/vaults -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"cid": "local", "data": {"secretKey":"secretValue"}}'

Check The Logs of Your Local Build

curl 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/logs/all/local'

Congratulations! You have deployed and interacted with your first AI Agent Contract on Phala Network! Now let's move to a more Web3-centric agent to execute transactions onchain by importing the Viem SDK into the AI Agent Contract.