Franklin

The pitch in one paragraph

Franklin Agent is an autonomous economic agent — an AI that holds a USDC wallet and spends it to get real work done, with trading as its flagship arena. It buys live market data, proposes trade plans you approve before a cent moves, pursues long-running goals across sessions, keeps a wallet-bound trading journal, and picks the best model per task from 86 models. You state an outcome and set a budget. Franklin Agent decides what to call, what to pay for, and when to stop. No subscriptions, no seats, no rate limits.

Funding it is your choice. Fund a USDC wallet and every paid action routes through the x402 micropayment protocol, settling on-chain against a wallet only you control — no signup, no account, the wallet is the identity. Or top up a prepaid balance at user.blockrun.ai and hand Franklin an API key. Same models, same tools, same agent. See Two ways to pay.

Built by the BlockRun team. Apache-2.0. TypeScript. Ships as one npm package.

YOPO — You Only Pay Outcome

Not a subscription (pay for access). Not a generic pay-per-call (pay for trying). You pay only for the work Franklin Agent delivers. Chat is provider cost with no markup, plus $0.001 per call; media carries 5%. Settled per action in USDC. No monthly fees. No rate limits. No overdraft.

Quick start

Requires Node.js 20.19+ (Node 22 LTS recommended). Check with node -v. Older Node crashes at startup with ERR_REQUIRE_ESM.

# 1. Install
npm install -g @blockrun/franklin

# 2. Run (free — uses the free models out of the box)
franklin

# 3. (optional) Unlock Sonnet, Opus, GPT, Gemini, Grok + every paid API.
#    Pick ONE — a USDC wallet, or a prepaid API key.

#    a) Wallet — no signup, no account
franklin setup solana      # or: franklin setup base / franklin setup arc
franklin balance           # show address + USDC balance

#    b) API key — sign up and top up at https://user.blockrun.ai
franklin login brk_live_...

Either route unlocks the same thing: $5 buys you every frontier model and every paid tool in the BlockRun gateway. The wallet route needs zero signup, zero credit card, zero phone verification. The key route needs an account but no crypto.

No global install? Just run it directly — no permissions, no -g:

npx @blockrun/franklin

Install troubleshooting

The clean, permanent fix for both is a user-owned Node so global installs never touch root-owned system folders:

# nvm (https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm)
nvm install 22 && nvm use 22
npm install -g @blockrun/franklin

# or fnm (https://github.com/Schniz/fnm)
fnm install 22 && fnm use 22
npm install -g @blockrun/franklin

Prefer a GUI? Try Franklin for VS Code

The same agent ships as a VS Code extension — chat panel, model picker, wallet balance, image / video generation — all driven by the wallet you already funded for the CLI.

VS Code → Extensions  (Cmd+Shift+X / Ctrl+Shift+X)
        → search "Franklin" → Install
        → click the Franklin icon in the Activity Bar

Free models work immediately. Paid models, image gen, and video gen use your selected payment method: funded API account credit or a USDC wallet. The CLI and the extension share the same ~/.blockrun/ config and session history, so jumping between terminal and VS Code is seamless.

Franklin Desktop (Beta)

Franklin Desktop brings the real Franklin agent into a native workspace for macOS and Windows. It uses the same local wallet, models, tools, and session runtime as the CLI, with a visual chat, conversation history, gallery, wallet, tools, skills, and CLI panels.

Beta distribution: signed public downloads and automatic updates are not live yet. Maintainers can download the short-lived unsigned installers from Desktop CI. Public signed builds will appear on the Franklin releases page.

Desktop is local-first: it opens in Documents/Franklin, keeps session history local by default, and asks before an agent accesses files outside the active workspace. External files are not blocked; each access requires explicit approval. Shell commands also require approval in the current beta.

The stable beta currently runs the Franklin agent. Team Mode and Studio adapters for additional agent CLIs are being developed separately and are not included in this release. See the Desktop guide for development and packaging instructions.

Two ways to pay

Franklin needs money to work — it buys model calls, market data, search and media generation on your behalf. There are two ways to give it that money, and they are interchangeable. Everything else about the agent is identical.

Three wallet chains. Solana (the default), Base, or Circle's Arc (chain 5042). Switch with franklin solana / franklin base / franklin arc, or the chain buttons on the panel's wallet page. Base and Arc share one EVM key, so the same address receives USDC on both; Solana has its own key. Card purchase (Coinbase Onramp) funds Base and Solana only — on Arc, send USDC to the address directly. franklin balance always reports the active chain's USDC, so after switching to Arc it shows your Arc balance, not Base's. Arc's gateway adds models after Base does; the picker lists what Arc serves today.

The wallet is still Franklin's identity. Memory, the trading journal and goals are keyed to it, and the wallet route is the