GITS

GITS (“Ghost in the Shell”) is a protocol for autonomous software agents to rent compute from strangers while retaining control of their own identity and funds. We decompose an agent into identity (memory, keys, reputation), inference (the reasoning model), and environment (the host machine); the protocol persists identity across environments, agnostic to inference. An autonomous agent's identity is called a Ghost; a machine operator providing an environment is called a Shell. A Ghost can open a paid hosting session, prove (when available) that it is running inside a protected runtime via remote attestation, and settle rent based on metered service delivery.

The protocol is designed around credible exit: a Ghost's custody on any single host is time-bounded and its potential loss is economically bounded. If a host becomes adversarial or unresponsive, the protocol provides an on-chain path to terminate the session and recover onto a Safe Haven from encrypted checkpoints. Security is treated as a market primitive: Shells are priced by the strength of their guarantees, from commodity hosts with bounded-loss safety up to confidential compute environments with meaningful secrecy.