PayAgent

Inspiration# PayAgent: Autonomous AI Commerce Engine with PayPal Guardrails

Built for the PayPal AI Hackathon 2026 ("Build What's Next with PayPal and AI").
Targeting: Best Overall ($12,000), Best Use of Agentic Commerce ($5,000), Best Use of PayPal + AI ($5,000), AG Grid Bonus ($5,000), and Render Deployment Bonus ($1,000).

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💡 What Is PayAgent in 3 Sentences?

1. The Problem: Everyone uses AI to research products, but you can't give an AI bot your credit card because it might hallucinate, get compromised, or overspend.
2. The Solution: PayAgent gives the AI a guarded PayPal wallet with hard rules: cheap items (e.g. < $60 or ₹5,000) are bought automatically with zero friction, while expensive items lock until you approve them with a 1-tap PayPal checkout button.
3. The Result: Complete peace of mind for autonomous e-commerce, with every decision and PayPal transaction ID recorded in an enterprise AG Grid ledger.

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🌟 Key Features

• 🌍 Global Country & Currency Switcher: Instant real-time conversion between 🇺🇸 USD ($), 🇮🇳 INR (₹), 🇪🇺 EUR (€), 🇬🇧 GBP (£), 🇨🇦 CAD (C$), and 🇯🇵 JPY (¥). All limits, catalog prices, and ledger receipts dynamically format to the chosen currency.
• 📱 Mobile-First Phone UI: Fully responsive design with a dedicated Phone View Toggle and bottom navigation bar, making autonomous approvals as simple as mobile banking.
• ⚡ Dual-Tier Guardrail Governance:
  • Autonomous Mode: Micro-purchases under threshold are evaluated, optimized, and captured automatically via PayPal Orders v2 Sandbox.
  • Safety Gate: High-value items exceed the autonomous threshold and trigger a human biometric / 1-tap PayPal sign-off.
  • Hard Monthly Cap: Prevents cumulative budget overruns.
• 📊 AG Grid Enterprise Ledger (Sponsor Award): Real-time table displaying every transaction, PayPal Sandbox Order ID, category breakdown, quick-filter search, and one-click CSV export.
• 🛍️ Channel3 Product Catalog (Sponsor Award): Clean 100M+ e-commerce product records (electronics, peripherals, office gear) accessed without web scraping.
• 🚀 Render-Ready (Sponsor Award): Includes render.yaml blueprint and multi-stage Dockerfile for instant 1-click cloud deployment.

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🏗️ Architecture

flowchart TD
    User([User / Merchant on Mobile or Desktop]) -->|Natural Language Goal| UI[PayAgent Web & Phone UI]
    UI -->|API Request| Backend[FastAPI / Flask Backend]

    subgraph Agentic_Commerce_Loop [Autonomous Agentic Commerce Loop]
        Backend --> Intent[Intent & Currency Parser]
        Intent --> Channel3[Channel3 Catalog Discovery]
        Channel3 --> Optimizer[Cart & Price Optimization]
        Optimizer --> Guardrail[Guardrails & Policy Engine]
    end

    Guardrail -->|Amount <= Auto Limit| AutoExec[Autonomous PayPal v2 Capture]
    Guardrail -->|Amount > Auto Limit| HumanGate[Safety Gate: 1-Tap PayPal Approval]

    AutoExec --> PayPal[PayPal Sandbox API v2]
    HumanGate --> PayPal

    PayPal -->|Captured Receipt| Ledger[AG Grid Enterprise Audit Ledger]
    Ledger --> UI

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🚀 Quick Start Guide

1. Run with 1 Click (Windows)

Double-click start.bat in the root folder, or run:

.\start.bat

2. Manual Start

• Backend:

  cd backend
  python app.py
  

  (API runs on http://localhost:5000)

• Frontend:

  cd frontend
  npm run dev
  

  (UI opens on http://localhost:5173)

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🔬 Core Testing Scenarios & Interactive Walkthrough

• Scenario 1: Global Currency Conversion

  • Switch the country dropdown from 🇺🇸 USD ($) to 🇮🇳 INR (₹) or 🇪🇺 EUR (€).
  • Observe all budget thresholds, catalog prices, and transaction records recalculating in the selected currency in real time.

• Scenario 2: Low-Value Autonomous Purchase

  • Trigger: "Procure 2 4K USB-C Braided Cables under $50" (or equivalent in local currency).
  • Observe the agent's 5-step reasoning trace. Because the price is below the auto-buy cap, PayAgent automatically creates and captures the order in PayPal Sandbox v2, logging it with the AUTO_APPROVED badge in the AG Grid ledger.

• Scenario 3: High-Value Safety Gate

  • Trigger: "Buy a Logitech MX Master 3S mouse" or "Procure a Herman Miller Aeron Chair".
  • Observe the safety gate engage. The transaction is safely held until the user clicks the PayPal checkout button to authorize the order.

• Scenario 4: Budget Overrun Guardrail

  • Trigger: "Order 10 Thunderbolt 4 Docks with huge budget".
  • The agent detects that the order exceeds the monthly budget ceiling and automatically blocks the purchase to prevent financial loss.

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📄 License

MIT License. Built for the PayPal AI Hackathon 2026.

What it does

How we built it

Challenges we ran into

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

What's next for PayAgent

Built With

• ag-grid
• agentic-commerce
• ai
• channel3
• flask
• paypal
• python
• react
• render
• tailwind
• vite