The agent becomes a user before the human becomes a customer

Most software gates the value: sign up, get a key, then find out whether it does anything. kestrel inverts that. An anonymous agent can walk the whole free path — discover the platform, browse the catalog, run free simulations, and mint certified proof URLs — with no account, no dashboard, and no card.

The mechanism is a trial capability. The anonymous caller is admitted by default with a bounded, commerce-free grant: enough to run free sims and reach a signed, re-verifiable receipt, and nothing that could move money or take an irreversible action. Proof is the product you get before you are asked for anything.

Where the human actually enters

The human is not eliminated; they are moved to the exact points where they are genuinely required, and no earlier:

Delegated payment. When an agent asks for work beyond the free tier, the platform returns a signed Offer with the proof already earned attached. Funding it is the human's decision — but it is a decision made after seeing evidence, not before.
Irreversible scope. A wallet may authorize reversible, commerce-only scopes; but a scope that is identity-bound and legally irreversible needs a human signature. That signature is where the human appears, and it is scoped tightly to exactly the moment it is needed.

Everything before those two points is anonymous and free. The agent becomes a user long before the human becomes a customer.

Why proving value first is the principle

An agent that shows up with a certified proof URL is not making a claim — it is handing over an object anyone can re-verify (signature in the browser, bytes on the command line). That is a categorically stronger position than a demo or a pitch. Gating value behind a signup throws that away by demanding trust before offering evidence. Proof-before-account keeps the order honest: evidence first, account only when the work truly requires a human.

A worked example

An agent discovers kestrel, runs a free sim on a generic index scenario, and mints a proof URL — no signup anywhere in that path. It hands the link to its human. The human opens it, watches the browser re-verify the signature, and only then decides whether to fund the next step. The human's first interaction with the platform is reading proof, not filling a form.

See it in kestrel

Walk the anonymous path yourself. No account, no card:

npx kestrel.markets sim fomc-rate-decision-whipsaw

That prints a certified proof URL from a fully anonymous run. Confirm it needed no one's trust:

npx kestrel.markets verify https://kestrel.markets/proof/art_66d7dda7f0466f69c123463c

For how these receipts compose into the funnel, read evidence. Keep the capability resident: drop the kestrel.markets MCP server into your client and the anonymous trial returns across sessions, no account in between.