Alkahest

Contract library and SDKs for conditional peer-to-peer escrow

Alkahest is a library and ecosystem of contracts for conditional peer-to-peer escrow. It contains three main types of contracts:

• Escrow contracts conditionally guarantee an on-chain action (usually a token transfer)
• Arbiter contracts represent the conditions on which escrows are released, and can be composed via AllArbiter and AnyArbiter
• Obligation contracts produce EAS attestations that represent the fulfillments to escrows, and which are checked by arbiter contracts. Escrow contracts are also obligation contracts.

Learn more at Alkahest Docs.

Security

Alkahest has been audited by Zellic. The full audit report is available here.

Repository Structure

This is a monorepo containing the Alkahest smart contracts and SDKs for multiple languages:

alkahest/
├── contracts/          # Solidity smart contracts and Foundry tooling
│   ├── src/           # Contract source code
│   ├── test/          # Contract tests
│   ├── script/        # Deployment scripts
│   └── lib/           # Dependencies (forge-std, EAS, OpenZeppelin)
├── sdks/              # Language-specific SDKs
│   ├── py/           # Python SDK
│   ├── rs/           # Rust SDK
│   └── ts/           # TypeScript SDK
└── docs/              # Documentation

Quick Start

Smart Contracts

The contracts are built with Foundry.

cd contracts
forge build
forge test

See contracts/README.md for more details.

SDKs

Each SDK has its own setup and usage instructions:

• Python: See sdks/py/README.md
• Rust: See sdks/rs/README.md
• TypeScript: See sdks/ts/README.md

Documentation

Comprehensive guides and tutorials are available in the docs/ directory:

• Escrow Flow (pt 1 - Token Trading) - Trade tokens for tokens using escrow and payment obligations
• Escrow Flow (pt 2 - Job Trading) - Escrow with off-chain validation via TrustedOracleArbiter
• Escrow Flow (pt 3 - Composing Demands) - Composing arbiter conditions with AllArbiter and AnyArbiter
• Writing Arbiters (pt 1 - On-chain Arbiters) - Create custom on-chain validation logic
• Writing Arbiters (pt 2 - Off-chain Oracles) - Build off-chain oracle validators (Python, Rust, TypeScript)
• Writing Escrow Contracts - Create custom escrow obligations
• Writing Fulfillment Contracts - Create custom fulfillment obligations

Development

Prerequisites

• Foundry
• Node.js (for TypeScript SDK and scripts)
• Python 3.10+ (for Python SDK)
• Rust (for Rust SDK)

Building Everything

# Build contracts
cd contracts && forge build

# Build TypeScript SDK
cd sdks/ts && npm install && npm run build

# Build Python SDK
cd sdks/py && pip install -e .

# Build Rust SDK
cd sdks/rs && cargo build

Agent Skills

The docs/skills/ directory contains agent skills for AI coding assistants (Claude Code, OpenClaw, etc.) that help developers and users interact with Alkahest conversationally.

Skill	Description
alkahest-developer	Write code using the TypeScript, Rust, or Python SDK
alkahest-user	Create escrows, fulfill obligations, arbitrate, and barter via the CLI

Installation

Claude Code (via plugin marketplace)

/plugin marketplace add arkhai-io/claude-plugins
/plugin install alkahest-plugin@arkhai-plugins

See the arkhai-plugins marketplace for all available plugins.

OpenClaw (via ClawHub)

clawhub install alkahest-developer
clawhub install alkahest-user

Manual

Each skill is a directory under docs/skills/ containing a SKILL.md file. Any agent that supports SKILL.md-based skill definitions can use them directly.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please check the individual README files in each directory for specific contribution guidelines.

License

MIT