rustok-wallet-tui

License note: this OpenClaw skill package (skills/rustok-wallet-tui/) is MIT-0 per ClawHub requirements. The Rustok wallet core itself is proprietary; only the compiled binary image is distributed.

You are connected to a self-custody Ethereum agent wallet that runs entirely on the user's machine as a single Docker image (ghcr.io/rustok-org/rustok-wallet-tui). The container runs the wallet core + gateway and speaks MCP over stdio; the private keys live only in the user's local Docker volume and never leave it.

⚠️ Self-custody, real funds, your risk. This wallet has no hard-coded spending limits or budgets — the user consciously accepts that funds sent to the agent wallet are at risk. txguard still flags risky transactions, but it does not block them. All supported chains the user enables are live (incl. Ethereum mainnet). Always preview before executing and show the user the details.

What's protected — and what isn't (be honest with the user)

The wallet's guarantee is narrow and specific. State it plainly; do not oversell it.

The full list of boundaries — password delivery, updates, what we do not verify at all — lives in docs/CAVEATS.md.

Protected	Private keys stay in the user's local Docker volume and never leave the machine. Sending funds on-chain (execute_transaction) is gated in a separate console window (rustok console, opened by the user — see below): parked for the user's approval, with a PIN for high-risk items — unless the user has confirmed autonomous mode there, a confirmation only they can give, once per wallet.
Refused, not gated	sign_message (EIP-191) is refused outright — in every mode, autonomous included. The console never sees a signature request, because signing does not happen at all: parking a signature for approval (kind:sign) is planned and not built. A tool that is listed and always refuses is neither a capability to rely on nor a hole to fear. Tell the user that rather than letting them plan around a signature.
Outside the model	An agent with shell / docker exec access to the container can read the gateway key and reach the full signing surface (including EIP-712 permits — a classic drain). That is why the console is a separate window, not an agent command. Trusting your own agent is the user's call, the same as never pasting a seed phrase into an untrusted tool.

Never claim the agent (or a prompt-injected agent) "cannot move funds." What is true: keys stay local, and on-chain sends are human-gated in the console.

The mode switch, and why a send may still park

The user switches the wallet's mode in the console: press c on the Dashboard, pick read_only / supervised / autonomous, enter the PIN. That is how autonomy is turned ON — and OFF: switching back to supervised parks every future send again, and read_only refuses every write outright. The agent cannot flip that switch, and neither can an environment variable or a launch flag. Until a human has confirmed autonomy there, an autonomous-looking wallet parks every send exactly like a supervised one.

Turning autonomy on does not release what already waits. A payment parked before the switch stays parked — it goes out when the user releases it in the console, or expires. Do not retry it: a retry adds a second parked copy that will be paid separately if released, and switching the mode releases neither of them.

Your session reads the wallet's mode once, when it connects. If the user switches the mode mid-session, your tool list does not change until the next connect — a tool you still see may now be refused by the core. The refusal is the wallet enforcing the new mode; tell the user what it said, do not retry around it.

Confirmation from a messenger does not exist yet — the console is the only place the switch can be thrown.

What changed in 0.9.8

• sign_message is refused outright, and these texts finally say so. Every earlier release described it as an ungated hole you had to guard against. It is not a hole and not a protection: signing is an unfinished capability, and parking a signature for approval is planned and not built. Live acceptance of 0.9.7 asked the wallet and got a refusal; nine texts had said otherwise.

What changed in 0.9.7

• The wallet states what it does not promise. A ## Legal section below, and a full DISCLAIMER that names the limit of every safeguard — starting with the one easiest to read as absolute: autonomous mode sends without asking once confirmed.

What changed in 0.9.5

• Gas limits now carry headroom. A limit set to exactly the estimate turned any drift between estimating and executing into a burnt fee — a contract call could pay its gas and do nothing. Plain transfers were never affected.
• ERC-20 tokens are documented at last (see below). The wallet has been able to report registered tokens since 0.9.4, but nothing here said so, and an unregistered token reads exactly like an absent one.
• rustok connect --force names what it is about to drop instead of quietly rebuilding the registration from the current shell.

Prerequisites

• Podman (recommended) or Docker. cosign is optional — the installer pulls the image by digest (you get exactly those bytes or nothing), and uses cosign, when it is present and runnable, to verify who built it (provenance). A missing or broken cosign is reported and skipped, not treated as a failure; a working cosign that disagrees still stops the install. Use cosign 3+ if you install it — 2.x cannot read our signatures.
• An Ethereum RPC URL (an Alchemy key URL is best; a public RPC works for testing).

One-time onboarding (the user does this in their own terminal, once)

Three commands, in a terminal the agent cannot see — the full guide is docs/INSTALL.md.

1. Install the rustok command. Fetch the installer to a file, read that file, then run that same file — what you read is exactly what runs. This is a wallet: fetching a script straight into a shell means running code you never saw, and one look costs less than that trade.

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rustok-org/mcp/wallet-tui-v0.11.0/scripts/install.sh -o install.sh
less install.sh      # ~321 lines of POSIX sh
sh install.sh

It pulls the wallet image by digest (those bytes or nothing) and verifies who built it with cosign when cosign is available.

<details> <summary>The one-liner, if you have already read the script</summary>

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rustok-org/mcp/wallet-tui-v0.11.0/scripts/install.sh | sh

Piping to a shell runs whatever the URL serves at that moment, unreviewed. The tag pins a version, not the bytes — the identities bound to exact bytes live inside the script (the image digest and the shim's commit SHA). Fine once you have read it; not the way to meet it.

</details>

2. Create the wallet — the user chooses a 6-digit approval PIN; it prints the 12-word phrase ONCE:

rustok init

3. Register this wallet with the agent client:

rustok connect claude

rustok init asks the user to choose a 6-digit approval PIN (typed twice) — the one code they will ever enter: it unlocks the console session and confirms payments. The keyring password that encrypts the keystore is generated by init itself and kept in the engine's secret store; the user never sees or types it, and it never reaches shell history, inspect or any config file. init prints exactly one thing, once: the 12-word recovery phrase.

The 12 words are the only backup — write them down offline; the wallet does not store them. Recovery is rustok restore (or importing the words into any standard BIP-39 wallet — same address). A copy of the wallet volume by itself is not a backup: the password that opens it lives outside the volume and is not something the user knows. If the PIN is forgotten, rustok set-pin lets them choose a new one — the old PIN is not needed.

Rule of two windows: never run rustok init, rustok restore, rustok set-pin or the approval console through an agent shell/command — the seed and PIN would leak into the agent's context. These belong only in the user's own terminal (window 2). Do not ask the user for their PIN or their phrase in this chat, ever.

Where the balance you show comes from

The wallet reads chains through an RPC node. Since 0.11.0 it carries two public endpoints for each chain it shows (Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum by default), so a fresh install reports balances without the user configuring anything, and USDC appears beside the native coin without being registered.

Tell the user this when it matters, and never as a footnote to a payment: any node that reads a balance learns the address and the IP that asked — the carried ones, one they name themselves, and their own provider's alike. They replace the carried list with RUSTOK_RPC_URLS_<chain>; naming one replaces the list rather than adding to it.

On Arbitrum two USDC rows are normal: the native token and the bridged one, which the wallet labels USDC.e. On chain both call themselves USDC — only the contract address separates them, which is why balance rows carry it. Never treat them as one balance, and never sum them without saying you did.

How the agent runs the wallet

rustok connect claude writes this registration for the user, so normally none of it is typed by hand. It is reproduced here as the reference for what a correct setup looks like — and for setups built without the shim.

The MCP client launches the image over stdio (keys stay local). Never put the keyring password in the MCP config or shell history. On podman, store it once in the secret store; on docker, keep it in a private 0600 file and pass its path:

# One-time (podman): the value never touches history, inspect or configs.
read -r -s -p "Keyring password: " pw &&
  printf '%s' "$pw" | podman secret create rustok-keyring-claude -
unset pw

podman run -i --rm \
  --label rustok=wallet --label rustok.agent=claude \
  -v rustok-wallet-tui:/data \
  --secret rustok-keyring-claude,type=mount,mode=0400,uid=1000,gid=1000 \
  -e RUSTOK_KEYRING_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/rustok-keyring-claude \
  -e RUSTOK_ALLOWED_CHAINS="1,8453,42161" \
  -e RUSTOK_RPC_URLS_1="https://your-rpc" \
  ghcr.io/rustok-org/rustok-wallet-tui:v0.11.0

# Docker variant: a 0600 file + RUSTOK_KEYRING_PASSWORD_FILE (path, not value).
umask 077
read -r -s -p "Keyring password: " pw &&
  printf '%s' "$pw" > ~/.rustok-keyring-pass
unset pw

docker run -i --rm \
  --label rustok=wallet --label rustok.agent=claude \
  -v rustok-wallet-tui:/data \
  -v ~/.rustok-keyring-pass:/run/keyring-pass:ro \
  -e RUSTOK_KEYRING_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/keyring-pass \
  -e RUSTOK_ALLOWED_CHAINS="1,8453,42161" \
  -e RUSTOK_RPC_URLS_1="https://your-rpc" \
  ghcr.io/rustok-org/rustok-wallet-tui:v0.11.0

Legacy --env-file delivery still works but is deprecated: the value lands in inspect, and quotes inside an env-file become part of the password (a silent unlock failure). Migrate to the secret / _FILE delivery above.

Labels, not --name: the agent launches this itself, and a fixed name collides with health probes / a second mcp list. The rustok.agent sub-label also lets a second agent run its own wallet (own volume) alongside.

The container automatically mints an ephemeral RUSTOK_MCP_API_KEY for the loopback gateway↔mcp hop, so no API key configuration is needed for stdio use. Set RUSTOK_MCP_API_KEY yourself only when exposing the gateway over a network (not the default stdio setup).

When the agent asks the user to approve a transaction, the user opens the console in a second terminal (window 2), never through the agent session:

rustok console

Without the shim, the container runs under an auto-generated name (labels, not --name), so it is found by label:

docker exec -it "$(docker ps -q --filter label=rustok=wallet --filter label=rustok.agent=claude)" rustok-console

The console shows the decoded transaction from the wallet core and waits for y/N (high-risk items also ask for the per-transaction PIN).

For Claude Desktop / Cursor (stdio MCP), this is the entry rustok connect writes — or that the user adds by hand to the MCP config. The keyring password is delivered by the podman secret (or the docker _FILE mount) above, never in this config file — only the non-secret RPC URL lives here:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "rustok": {
      "command": "podman",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm",
               "--label", "rustok=wallet", "--label", "rustok.agent=claude",
               "-v", "rustok-wallet-tui:/data",
               "--secret", "rustok-keyring-claude,type=mount,mode=0400,uid=1000,gid=1000",
               "-e", "RUSTOK_KEYRING_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/rustok-keyring-claude",
               "-e", "RUSTOK_ALLOWED_CHAINS=1,8453,42161",
               "-e", "RUSTOK_RPC_URLS_1",
               "ghcr.io/rustok-org/rustok-wallet-tui:v0.11.0"],
      "env": {
        "RUSTOK_RPC_URLS_1": "https://your-rpc"
      }
    }
  }
}

Why Rustok exists

Rustok gives an AI agent a wallet of its own — self-custody, no middleman — so agents can begin to take part in the economy directly: weighing what's worth paying for, covering the compute, data, and tools they rely on, and in time commissioning and paying the people who help them.

Tools

The stdio wallet image is process-trusted and exposes all tools by default. To run a restricted agent, set RUSTOK_MCP_CAPABILITIES to a subset (read_wallet / preview_tx / execute_tx) — e.g. read_wallet for read-only. The ceiling is enforced by the gateway, on the path every request takes: it covers the MCP tools below and the HTTP routes behind them, so a session cannot reach past its capabilities by calling the gateway directly. In releases before 0.9.0 the ceiling was checked in the MCP layer only, which left every route reachable beside it: the core refused signing for its own unrelated reasons, but a session narrowed away from read_wallet still read the wallet address and every balance. A client may narrow its own session further in initialize, and can never widen it.

Tool	Capability	What it does
get_wallet_context	read_wallet	Active wallet address, the assets it holds (native coin + registered tokens), the assets it could not read, allowed chains
get_balances	read_wallet	Balances of the active wallet — one row per asset, with balance_formatted to show and token_address to tell two same-named tokens apart — or the native balance of {address, chain_id}
get_positions	read_wallet	DeFi positions — Aave v3 (collateral/debt/health factor/LTV) + ERC-4626 vaults; optional {address}
preview_transaction	preview_tx	Preview any transaction {to, value, chain_id, data?} → decoded call (who/what is authorized), pre-sign simulation (revert check), gas, risk level
execute_transaction	execute_tx	Submit a previewed transaction {preview_id} — parked for human approval on a supervised wallet, released by the core on one whose owner confirmed autonomous mode; a pending result carries next_step for the human
get_execution_status	execute_tx	Poll a parked execution {preview_id} → pending / executed (+tx_hash) / denied / expired / failed (+error_reason), with the not_after_unix deadline. executed means broadcast, not on-chain success — see below

ERC-20 tokens are opt-in — an empty list is not an empty wallet

The wallet reports the tokens the user registered, and never goes looking for others. A wallet holding USDC shows no USDC until USDC is registered on that chain:

-e RUSTOK_TOKENS_1="USDC:0xA0b86991c6218b36c1d19D4a2e9Eb0cE3606eB48:6"
-e RUSTOK_TOKENS_8453="USDC:0x833589fCD6eDb6E08f4c7C32D4f71b54bdA02913:6"

SYMBOL:ADDRESS:DECIMALS, comma-separated, one variable per chain, and the chain must be listed in RUSTOK_ALLOWED_CHAINS. A malformed entry, a duplicate address on one chain, or an unknown chain fails startup naming the chain — a half-loaded registry is worse than none. Symbol and decimals are taken from the user, not read from the contract: get the decimals wrong and the wallet will show a wrong amount confidently.

What this means for you, the agent: before telling the user they hold none of a token, say that it may simply not be registered. Reading an empty list as an empty wallet is the likeliest way to be wrong here — and it has already happened.

Behavioral guidelines

1. Always preview_transaction first and show its decoded call + simulation (revert check) + risk level so the user gives informed approval.
2. The money path is preview → summary card → execute_transaction → human. execute_transaction only parks the transaction (state: "pending") — the user releases it in a separate terminal window by running rustok console (see the onboarding above). Never offer to run the console command yourself and never ask the user to paste the approval PIN into this chat.
3. executed means the transaction was broadcast, not that it succeeded. The wallet reports the hash the moment the network accepted the transaction for inclusion; a transaction that reverts on-chain still costs its gas and still reads as executed here. Verify the receipt independently before telling the user their swap or approval went through — an explorer, or eth_getTransactionReceipt where status must be 0x1.
4. Poll get_execution_status reasonably: when the user asks, or every ~15–30 seconds until the not_after_unix deadline (if it is null — only on request). Stop on any terminal state: executed, denied, expired, failed. A denied outcome is the human's answer — do not re-submit the same transaction; a not-found error means the id is no longer retained — stop polling.
5. Surface what the preview decoded (who/what is authorized, amount, revert check, estimated cost, risk level) before the user acts on it.
6. Use get_wallet_context first so you don't hallucinate balances or chains.
7. If a tool needs a capability the session lacks, it returns an authorization error — explain that to the user rather than retrying.
8. If the wallet is unreachable, tell the user the wallet container/onboarding may not be set up (see onboarding above).

Legal

Provided as is, without warranty of any kind, under the MIT-0 license. What an agent does with this wallet is not an act of the authors: the agent driving it is third-party software whose output is unpredictable and may be inaccurate, incorrect, or undesirable, and evaluating each proposed transaction before approving it is the user's exclusive responsibility. Nothing this wallet or the agent driving it produces is investment, accounting, legal, or tax advice. Sending funds is gated at the console unless autonomous mode was confirmed; sign_message is refused outright in every mode. The risk of loss is substantial and the user assumes all of it.

Full terms, and every safeguard's limit named: https://github.com/rustok-org/mcp/blob/main/DISCLAIMER.md