A phone number for your AI agent.
One real phone number that humans can text and call. The same number your AI agent uses to dial restaurants, file invoices, settle payments, and get things done in the real world.
No app to install. No new platform to learn. Just a contact in iMessage.
Three flows, one number
The agent handles whichever shape the situation needs — sometimes money moves, sometimes it doesn't. Same engine.
"Find a 7pm dinner reservation tonight for 4 at a well-reviewed Italian spot near the Mission."
Your agent:
- Pulls a candidate list from web search
- Calls three restaurants in parallel
- Restaurant asks for a $100 deposit. Agent texts you: "Approve $100 USDC to Bestia? Reply YES."
- You reply YES. Agent settles inline and confirms the booking.
Deposit $100 USDC held. Receipt: pulse520.ai/r/abc123
~90s · machine-to-machine USDC settlement · you approved the spend
"Call Comcast and lower my bill."
Your agent:
- Dials the retention line, absorbs the IVR + hold music
- Texts you when a human picks up; you tap into the call
- Negotiates the discount alongside you
- The new rate applies to your existing Comcast account — no money moves through Pulse520
Charged to your Visa ending 4242, same as before.
~14 min of hold time absorbed · settlement stayed on your existing card
"Call my dentist and find out if there's any opening this week."
Your agent:
- Looks up the saved contact ("dentist") in your address book
- Calls the office, identifies itself as your assistant
- Asks for availability, takes notes on the schedule
- Texts you back the slots — you decide if you want to book
Want me to book? Reply with a day/time.
~45s · pure hold-time absorption · zero payments involved
Money never moves without your YES.
Every outbound USDC payment triggers an SMS to you with the amount, the recipient, and what it's for. You reply YES to send, NO to decline, or set a per-agent auto-approve cap for small recurring spend. The agent pauses the call while it waits — no surprise transfers, no "the AI decided."
Real capabilities, in production
Pulse520 is live in private beta. These are things your agent can do right now — no waiting list, no roadmap promises.
Chat by SMS
Text your number with any question and get an LLM-quality reply. Phone-as-ChatGPT for everyone who won't open the app.
Photo Q&A
Send a photo: foreign menu translation, plant ID, parking-sign decoder, screenshot summarizer, symptom triage (with a doctor disclaimer).
Invoice capture
Text a photo of an invoice or receipt. Vendor, date, totals, line items, and category are extracted and filed — browse them later and export to CSV for taxes.
Voice agent
When someone calls your number you can have an AI agent answer, take a message, screen the call, or transact on your behalf.
Agent tools (MCP)
Use your Pulse520 number from Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client. Your agent can make outbound calls and texts with a stated objective and get back a structured transcript.
Native payments
Outbound calls are metered in USDC over the x402 standard. When a restaurant asks for a deposit, the agent can settle inside the same call leg — no callback to a web checkout.
Six ways people use it
Restaurants is the famous demo — the real surface is much wider. These are the shapes of value the same phone number unlocks.
Personal assistant
- Text-a-photo for instant answers
- Capture invoices and receipts
- "Call my mom and tell her I'm running late"
- Reminders, voicemail digest, eldercare check-ins
Agent calls humans for you
- Restaurant reservations
- Doctor / dentist booking
- Customer-service callbacks (Comcast, Verizon)
- Vendor quotes, government hold-times
People call you (or your expert)
- Pay-by-minute doctor / nurse consults
- Lawyer / accountant quick questions
- Therapist, coach, language tutor
- Translator-on-demand, eldercare daily call
Two AI assistants coordinate
- Schedule a meeting between two people
- B2B vendor RFQ with inline settlement
- Customer-service AI ↔ your AI
- Cross-agent referral with split settlement
Answer the phone for me
- Coffee shop, salon, nail, spa bookings
- Dental / medical office front desk
- Independent plumbers, electricians, HVAC
- Real-estate first-line buyer screening
Photo / voice in, answer out
- "What is this?" plant / sign / car part
- "Should I be worried?" symptom / leak / noise
- "Translate this" menu / document
- "Help me decide" two outfits side-by-side
Most of them don't move money
USDC settlement gets the demo screenshots, but the everyday value is faster than that. Here's what people actually use it for — grouped by what the agent does, not by how it pays.
Information gathering
Agent calls, you don't have to
- "Does the Apple Store on Stockton have iPhone 17 Pro in titanium?"
- "Verify Dr. Patel still takes Blue Cross PPO before I book."
- "Is the Whole Foods on 24th open right now?"
No payment. Pure hold-time absorption.
Coordination & booking
Multi-call scheduling that doesn't need a deposit
- "Find a haircut for my sister tomorrow at 11am."
- "Schedule Milo's vet checkup, Saturday mornings preferred."
- "Get me a piano tuner who can come this weekend."
Pay in person, after the service.
Bills & disputes
The most painful 30 minutes of your month
- "Call Comcast and lower my bill."
- "Dispute the $89.50 Hertz charge from March 14."
- "Cancel my LA Fitness membership."
Settled on your existing card — Pulse520 never touches it.
Status & monitoring
Periodic check-ins on real-world state
- "Call the shop tomorrow at 4pm and see if my car is ready."
- "Hold for the airline if my flight is delayed."
- "Check on my Amazon return; tell me when it lands."
No money involved — answers, not transactions.
Translation & accessibility
Speak through your agent in any language
- "Call my hotel in Tokyo and ask them to send a doctor."
- "My grandmother only speaks Cantonese — schedule her Medicare appointment."
- "Take this incoming call from my landlord and text me the transcript."
Bills handled at the visit, not through us.
On-your-behalf outbound
Secretary work without the secretary
- "Call my mom and tell her I'll be home late tonight."
- "Wake me at 6am with a 30-second pep talk."
- "Tell my contractor the door key is under the mat."
Zero payments. Pure message-passing.
B2B research
Vendor quotes and verification at scale
- "Get quotes from 5 commercial cleaners for our SoMa office."
- "Verify Acme Construction's California license."
- "Call 3 caterers about a 50-person event in May."
Vendor invoices on their existing rails — ACH, Stripe, whatever they use.
Document capture
Inbound photos & voice → structured data
- Text a photo of a receipt → filed in your invoices list
- Send a voice memo → categorized expense rows
- Photo of a business card → contact entry
No payment — pure data extraction.
USDC is one of four settlement modes, not the defining feature. It's right for agent-to-agent commerce where neither party has a card on file with the other. For everything above, settlement is either nothing at all, in-person card at the counter, your existing card on file, or the vendor's normal invoicing rail. The engine routes whichever rail fits.
One number, three doors
Humans text it
From the dialer or iMessage. The number is just a contact — share it like you'd share your own.
Humans call it
The voice agent answers in your persona. It can take a message, screen, or transact on your behalf.
Other agents call it
MCP-compatible AI agents (Claude, Cursor, etc.) can dial it for you — and pay each other in real time.
Why a phone number? Every device built since 1983 can dial it. Every business, government office, doctor, and restaurant already has one on file. Other "AI-native" channels — Slack, iMessage Business, RCS — reach a tiny slice of that surface. The PSTN is the only universal address book.
The next year, in four phases
We ship every change behind a feature flag and never gate production traffic on the next milestone. Honest dates, honest scope.
Activation foundation
Photo Q&A and invoice capture are live. One-line install for MCP clients, sub-minute pairing, ten merchant partners on the supply side.
Payments in the call
Mid-call deposits over USDC for restaurant reservations, signed transcript receipts shareable in iMessage, daily merchant summaries.
Discovery and supply scale
A directory of agent-callable merchants. Verified-merchant badges. Multilingual voice. AP2 / ACP card-rail prototype with one PSP partner.
Market expansion
HIPAA-eligible tier for medical scheduling. Bring-your-own-Twilio-number for power users. Cross-agent referral protocol. International voice.
The agent-payments stack is fragmenting fast
Six credible protocols launched in the last 18 months — each optimizes for a different leg of the agent-payment problem. Here's where we are today, what we're integrating next, and the reasoning behind both.
The short version: no single protocol covers every payment shape an agent runs into. Some are built for stablecoin settlement (x402, Tempo). Some are built for card-rail authorization (AP2, ACP). Some bundle the wallet plus the identity plus the spending caps (Coinbase Agentic Wallets, Skyfire). Our stance is to start with the rail that fits machine-to-machine commerce cleanest (x402) and add the others as user-facing payment surfaces demand them.
x402 (Coinbase) ↗
HTTP-402 + USDC on Base
Revives the HTTP 402 Payment Required status code as a real payment rail. Agent receives a 402 response with a payload, signs a USDC transfer, retries. Sub-second settlement, sub-cent gas, 50M+ transactions in production.
Best for: Machine-to-machine. Sub-dollar metered spend. Agent pays Pulse520 for outbound calls.
Tradeoff: Stablecoin-native — fine for agents, friction for humans who don't hold USDC.
Tempo MPP ↗
Stripe-led L1 + Machine Payments Protocol
Tempo Mainnet shipped March 2026 with the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) co-developed with Stripe. MPP is payment-agnostic — works with stablecoins, cards, Affirm, Klarna. Visa contributed the card-rail specs. Anthropic, OpenAI, Shopify, DoorDash, Mastercard, Nubank, Standard Chartered, Visa, Revolut, Ramp are launch partners.
Best for: Human pays via existing card or BNPL → settles to merchant via stablecoin behind the scenes. Bridges the dominant payment rail to crypto settlement.
Tradeoff: Still new — mainnet went live two months ago, ecosystem catching up.
Coinbase Agentic Wallets ↗
MPC wallet-per-agent + native x402
Shipped Feb 2026. Plug-and-play MPC-secured wallet for any AI agent, with programmable session caps + per-transaction limits + gasless Base settlement. Installable via `npx awal` or as an MCP server compatible with Claude, Codex, Gemini. Sits on top of AgentKit (the open-source skills framework).
Best for: Spinning up a self-custodied wallet per Pulse520 agent — fits cleanly with our existing x402 outbound payments.
Tradeoff: Coinbase-stack lock-in for the wallet layer. The protocol itself (x402) stays portable.
AP2 (Google) ↗
Mandate-signed agent authorization
Open-source Agent Payments Protocol from Google. Introduces cryptographically signed mandates — digital statements defining what an agent is allowed to do (create cart, complete purchase, manage subscription). Focus is on authorization + traceability, not settlement itself.
Best for: Card-rail merchants who need cryptographic proof of user intent before honoring an agent purchase.
Tradeoff: Spec stage; needs PSP support to operationalize. We'll integrate when one of our merchant partners' PSPs ships native AP2 support.
ACP (Stripe + OpenAI) ↗
Chat-channel commerce protocol
Agentic Commerce Protocol — Apache 2.0 licensed, designed for in-conversation purchases on platforms like ChatGPT. Browse → compare → buy without leaving the chat. Stripe-rail-heavy by default.
Best for: Letting a user buy from a Pulse520 merchant directly through their chat with the agent — settled on the merchant's existing Stripe account.
Tradeoff: Best suited to typed conversational commerce; we lead with voice and SMS, where the same flow needs adaptation.
Skyfire ↗
Pre-funded agent spending accounts
Wallet-as-a-service for AI agents. Owner pre-funds a spending account (stablecoin or fiat), sets caps, agent draws against it. Identity layer authenticates agents to merchants. Raised $9.5M from Neuberger Berman, a16z CSX, Coinbase Ventures.
Best for: Pulse520 users who don't want to hold their own USDC — Skyfire holds the float, we route the spend.
Tradeoff: Single-vendor dependency for the float layer. Same outcome reachable via Coinbase Agentic Wallets + auto-funding.
Be rail-agnostic. Route to the right rail per payment shape.
We don't want to be a stablecoin company. We want to be the phone-number-for-your-agent that also handles whatever settlement makes sense. Today the rail is x402 because it's the cleanest fit for machine-to-machine deposits. Six months from now most owners won't care which rail their agent used — they'll care that the booking went through and the receipt arrived.
Every outbound USDC transfer — regardless of rail — runs through the same SMS-confirmation flow above. The protocol changes; the consent step doesn't.
Your own Hermes, fine-tuned on your life
Today every paired number talks to a shared frontier model. Once the network is real, each owner gets their own open-source Hermes — fine-tuned on their conversations, contacts, and preferences.
Shared frontier model
- Every paired number routes through a shared API model
- Personalization via persona prompts + your contacts
- Pennies per message — scales with API spend, not infra
- Right call for today: ship fast, learn what users want
One Hermes, fine-tuned for you
- Dedicated open-source Hermes instance (Hermes 4 family, 14B → 405B variants) per paired number
- Fine-tuned on your call / text history and saved contacts
- Owner-controlled weights — privacy a shared API can't match
- Foundation for offline + on-device inference long-term
Why Hermes: Hermes 4 from Nous Research is the leading open-source agentic model family — tool-use-native, function-calling-fluent, hybrid reasoning with explicit <think> segments, up to 512K context (Hermes 4.3), permissively licensed. The right base to fine-tune per-user. When we'll start: not before personalization is a measured retention lever. Migrating to per-number models is an infrastructure project, not an ML research project — we wait for the demand signal before paying its cost.
One number.
Made for what comes next.
Your AI assistant by SMS. Your agent's handle for calling the real world. The settlement endpoint for every transaction it does. One product, three doors.