Nunchuk Introduces 'Bounded Authority': AI Agents Get a Bitcoin Allowance, Not the Keys to the Kingdom

Bitcoin wallet company Nunchuk has dropped open-source tools that let AI agents play around with Bitcoin wallets without actually owning the place. Think of it as giving your AI assistant a prepaid card instead of handing over your debit card and PIN—revolutionary concept, right?

"Current approaches either hand the agent full authority over a standalone wallet, or use delegated signing where the agent acts on the user's behalf," Nunchuk founder and CEO Hugo Nguyen told Decrypt. "The problem with both is the same: once the agent is set up, there's no meaningful check on what it can do with your money. If it's compromised, misconfigured, or just makes a bad call, nothing stops it." In crypto terms, that's like leaving your front door open and hoping burglars have a moral compass.

Founded in 2020, Nunchuk is an open-source mobile Bitcoin wallet that uses multisignature security to support self-custody and inheritance planning. Instead of trusting your Bitcoin to a single private key like it's 2013, users can spread the love across multiple keys—because why put all your sats in one basket?

The new software is published under an MIT open-source license and includes two repos: Nunchuk CLI and Agent Skills for Nunchuk CLI. It's like getting a toolkit for your robot butler, except this one can't drain your retirement fund on questionable NFTs.

Nunchuk CLI is a command-line tool that lets AI agents interact with Bitcoin in shared wallets where users keep control of their private keys. If a transaction tries to moon past a set spending limit, the human gets a notification and must approve it. The agent can operate within bounded authority, but above the limit, the human still has to sign.

"The agent can operate within bounded authority, but above the limit, the human still has to sign," Nguyen said. "Just as importantly, funding the wallet and authorizing the agent are separate decisions: the wallet can receive funds without automatically increasing what the agent is allowed to spend." Imagine if your Venmo request limit was $50 and your AI assistant had to ask permission to buy the dip—nightmare fuel for degens, dream scenario for anyone with financial sense.

Agent Skills provides an interface that allows AI models to use the CLI across tasks like wallet setup,