Stage 1: Maintainer

The agent begins assuming operational responsibilities with human oversight:

• Backtesting and simulation execution

• Automated integration testing and validation

• Systematic asset discovery and evaluation

• Supervised decision-making processes

At this stage, the agent begins automating core project features previously handled by humans. Most DeFi protocols cannot be fully permissionless because they must assume certain risks. For example, Uniswap operates completely permissionlessly because it transfers all risks to liquidity providers, while Aave must assume bad debt risk and therefore requires gatekeepers. The Maintainer agent automates this gatekeeper role, focusing on tasks with clear, detailed instructions. This advancement enables previously permission-dependent DeFi protocols to potentially become autonomous.

The Maintainer phase is heavily tool-oriented and requires significant development effort to enable all necessary functionality. For mission-critical tasks, the Maintainer agent operates with human-in-the-loop validation. This stage is project-specific and necessitates custom integrations tailored to each implementation.