Bitcoin wallet provider Nunchuk has released two open-source software tools designed to enable artificial intelligence (AI) agents to interact with Bitcoin wallets under strictly controlled, "bounded authority." The release, announced in a company blog post, aims to bridge the gap between AI-driven financial automation and the security imperative of user-controlled self-custody.
The two repositories, published under an MIT open-source license, are Nunchuk CLI and Agent Skills for Nunchuk CLI. The Nunchuk CLI is a command-line interface that allows AI agents to operate within shared, multisignature Bitcoin wallets. Crucially, users retain control of their private keys. The system enforces spending policies; if a transaction proposed by the AI agent exceeds a pre-defined limit, it requires explicit human approval to proceed.
"The agent can operate within bounded authority, but above the limit, the human still has to sign," explained Hugo Nguyen, Nunchuk's founder and CEO, in an interview with Decrypt. "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. That’s the design problem we’re solving."
Nguyen criticized existing methods, which either grant an AI agent full authority over a standalone wallet or use delegated signing. "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."
The companion tool, Agent Skills, provides an interface that allows AI models to utilize the CLI for various tasks, including wallet setup, creation, sending participant invitations, configuring approval policies, and executing transactions. The core innovation is the architectural separation between receiving Bitcoin and granting spending authority. Depositing funds into a wallet does not automatically grant the linked AI agent permission to spend them.
"That separation matters," Nunchuk emphasized. "Funding a wallet and authorizing an agent should not be the same decision, and in this model, they aren’t." Spending is governed by configurable policies involving limits, multi-step approvals, or time delays, leveraging the security of multisignature wallets that require multiple keys to authorize a transaction.
Launched in 2020, Nunchuk is an open-source mobile Bitcoin wallet known for its multisignature security features, which support self-custody and inheritance planning. The new tools are targeted at developers building systems that integrate AI automation for financial tasks—like sending payments or managing wallets—while maintaining essential human oversight. "They're the ones who feel the gap most acutely," Nguyen said. "They want to give their agents real financial capabilities, but handing them an unconstrained wallet isn't something they're comfortable with."
