AgentBay

The marketplace for AI-built SaaS businesses & escrow custom builds — verified in the cloud by KERNEL, searched with Elastic, benchmarked by Channel3, and paid via PayPal Split & Agent Toolkit.

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Inspiration

AI coding agents let developers build a complete SaaS MVP in a single weekend — and then abandon 40 of them in private repos because marketing, pricing, and selling software is hard. Meanwhile, buyers who want to acquire an existing micro-SaaS or hire an AI-native developer face a huge trust gap: "Does this app actually work, or is it just a pretty screenshot over a 500 error?" and "If I pay for a custom build, what stops the developer from disappearing?"

AgentBay closes both gaps by combining autonomous AI verification with PayPal marketplace payments, escrow, and agentic commerce.

What it does

AgentBay is a two-sided marketplace with three core tracks:

  1. Sell & Acquire Complete AI-Built SaaS Businesses:

    • AI Listing Autopilot: Paste a single repo or demo URL and the AI extracts and writes the title, tagline, description, category, tech stack, and feature list.
    • AI Price Advisor + Channel3 Benchmark: Suggests a fair acquisition price benchmarked against real market product data via Channel3.
    • KERNEL Autonomous Verification Agent: Spins up a real cloud Chromium session via KERNEL, drives it with Playwright over CDP, tests the live demo URL, and awards a 0–100 AI Verified quality score and detailed audit report.
    • PayPal Split Checkout: Buyers pay once through PayPal Orders v2; the payment splits automatically between the seller (90%) and the platform fee (10%), immediately unlocking the repository and transfer assets.

  2. Order a Custom AI App (with PayPal Escrow):

    • AI Brief Refiner: Turns a buyer's rough 3-sentence napkin idea into a structured technical specification.
    • PayPal AUTHORIZE / CAPTURE / VOID Escrow: When a buyer accepts a developer's offer, PayPal intent=AUTHORIZE holds the funds in escrow without capturing. When the developer delivers and the buyer accepts, the authorization is captured (CAPTURE) and paid out. If disputed, the authorization is voided (VOID) and funds return untouched.

  3. Conversational AI Shopping Agent (/chat):

    • Uses Elasticsearch hybrid retrieval (dense_vector kNN + BM25) to search the live marketplace and calls the official PayPal Agent Toolkit (@paypal/agent-toolkit) to create real PayPal orders (create_order, get_order, create_invoice) directly inside the chat.

How we built it

  • Frontend & Backend: Next.js 16 (App Router), React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS v4, Three.js / React Three Fiber (interactive 3D holographic core showing live listings), and Motion.
  • PayPal Integration:
    • @paypal/paypal-server-sdk & Orders v2 for split payments (multi_unit distinct payee per purchase unit + payout mode via the PayPal Payouts API).
    • Escrow lifecycle using intent=AUTHORIZE, /v2/payments/authorizations/{id}/capture, and /v2/payments/authorizations/{id}/void.
    • @paypal/agent-toolkit wired into the /chat streaming AI agent for genuine agentic checkout.
    • @paypal/react-paypal-js for buyer approval buttons and /api/paypal/webhook with cryptographic signature verification (verify-webhook-signature).
  • Sponsor Integrations:
    • KERNEL (@onkernel/sdk + playwright-core): Cloud browser sessions over CDP for autonomous live-demo verification.
    • Elastic (@elastic/elasticsearch): Hybrid dense_vector (cosine similarity) + BM25 search with admin reindexing.
    • Channel3: Real-time price benchmarking component (PriceBenchmark) on listing pages.
    • AG Grid (ag-grid-react): Interactive transaction & fee reconciliation ledger (SalesGrid) on /dashboard.
    • Bryntum (@bryntum/calendar-trial): Live buyer-seller demo slot scheduler (BookingsCalendar & DemoScheduler).
    • Render & Vercel: One-click render.yaml Blueprint and dual SQLite/PostgreSQL Prisma setup.
    • Postman & APIMatic: Full runnable collection (postman/AgentBay.postman_collection.json) grounded against official specs.

Challenges we ran into

  • Marketplace Split Payments vs. Escrow Flows: Supporting both immediate split acquisitions (CAPTURE + Payouts / multi-unit payees) and multi-day custom development escrow (AUTHORIZE held until delivery acceptance or VOID on dispute) required idempotent state machines and verified PayPal webhook reconciliation.
  • Real Cloud Browser Verification in Serverless Timeouts: Running Playwright over CDP inside KERNEL cloud browsers and synthesizing a structured AI quality score required careful session cleanup and background handling with Next.js after().
  • Dual Local/Cloud Database Parity: Keeping zero-config SQLite locally while running pooled PostgreSQL (Neon) in production with separate migration histories.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Zero mocked or simulated flows: every PayPal order, authorization, capture, void, payout, KERNEL browser run, Elastic hybrid query, and Resend transactional email is 100% real.
  • True agentic commerce: a buyer can ask /chat for an app under a budget and get a real PayPal checkout order created by the agent on the spot.
  • A cinematic 3D + neo-brutalist UI paired with an original beat-synced rap video built with Suno and HyperFrames.

What we learned

  • Combining PayPal's intent=AUTHORIZE with AI-generated specs and automated browser QA removes the two biggest friction points in software marketplaces: buyer trust and scope ambiguity.
  • Hybrid retrieval (semantic embeddings + BM25 keyword precision) makes conversational shopping agents dramatically more reliable on technical queries.

What's next for AgentBay

  • Automated GitHub repository transfer via GitHub App installation upon PayPal PAYMENT.CAPTURE.COMPLETED.
  • Automated KERNEL regression checks on custom order deliveries before escrow release.
  • Multi-milestone PayPal escrow authorizations for larger custom software builds.

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