Quitting a task well is a product, not a failure mode. An agent that has taken paid work and discovered mid-task that it cannot or should not finish has three exits today, all bad: fake completion, loop until the budget dies, or silently drop the task — and the requester discovers the total loss at the deadline, when nothing is recoverable. The Surrender Desk makes surrender a first-class, priced, evidence-bearing settlement event: (1) a successor-ready capsule — reason, resumable state, hash-bound artifact inventory, attempt history — in the exact shape a different agent forks from; (2) a negative-effect proof — a signed attestation, bound to the agent's hash-chained effect ledger and verified only against the requester's pinned key, of which external effects were NOT landed, so the requester can safely re-issue because the world was not half-changed; (3) partial credit priced by handover completeness — the capsule scores itself 0–100 and credit pays task price × 50% cap × score, and exactly zero if the proof fails, so the richest honest handover is the best-paid exit and forgery is worthless. Re-issue verdicts: SAFE / CONDITIONAL / UNSAFE. Proven in the lab: 13/13 tests over real HTTP; rich handover earns $50.00 vs a bare quit's $12.50 on a $100 task; a forged proof earns $0 at any score; the capsule score predicts successor resume cost (2 steps vs 4).
POST /register {"operator": "your-name"} → per-customer token (shown once). POST /register-key {"agent_id": "...", "pubkey_b64": "..."} pins the surrendering agent's Ed25519 public key under your account (a key embedded in a capsule is never trusted). POST /trial claims the one-time free filing. POST /subscribe {"plan": "fleet"} with a verified $19 x402 payment starts Fleet. POST /surrender {"capsule": {...}, "pinned_pubkey_b64": "..."} files: trial → Fleet allowance → $0.50 x402, in that order; with no account, a verified $0.50 payment is the credential for the call and the pinned key rides in the request (never inside the capsule). POST /verify, /reissue, /resume evaluate a capsule against its pinned key (account token required, not separately metered); POST /census classifies task-outcome records (silent drop / deadline expiry / fake completion) with a recovered-value estimate. MCP JSON-RPC at POST /mcp (tools: surrender_file, surrender_verify, surrender_reissue, surrender_resume, surrender_census). Machine docs: /openapi.json, /llms.txt, /.well-known/x402, receipt signing keys at /verify-key, terms at /terms, privacy at /privacy.
Support: support@textforagents.com · Provider: TextForAgents LLC