Autonomous mode — hood-launcher

The loop

1. Watch

Polls the free three.ws crypto-news digest (GET /api/news/digest) — real clustered narratives with a title, summary, market stance, and tickers, no key required.

2. Propose

The strongest un-proposed narrative becomes a theme. The concept engine generates a name/ticker/description, runs the safety screen, checks on-chain ticker uniqueness, and resolves artwork — then runs a full preflight (dry-run, nothing spent).

3. Approve

AUTO_APPROVE=1 executes automatically (still subject to every cap below), or an operator approves explicitly — hood-auto approve <id> / POST /auto/approve/:id.

4. Execute

Only with LIVE=1 set — approval and liveness are independent gates. Without LIVE=1, an approved proposal still just runs another dry-run and reports what would have happened.

Hard caps

Enforced in src/core/caps.ts, on every launch — manual or autonomous. Throws a typed error, never warns-and-proceeds.

Cap	Env var	Enforcement
Launches per day	`MAX_LAUNCHES_PER_DAY` (default 3)	Rolling 24h window over the launch ledger
Seed value	`MAX_SEED_USDG` (default 50)	Live Uniswap v3 WETH→USDG quote converts the seed/buy to a USD estimate before every launch
Kill switch	—	SIGINT, SIGTERM, a `KILL` sentinel file, or `POST /kill`
Responsibility	`ACKNOWLEDGE_LAUNCH_RESPONSIBILITY=1`	Required before any `LIVE=1` launch

CLI

hood-auto tick                      # one poll-propose cycle
hood-auto list                      # pending proposals
hood-auto approve <id>
hood-auto reject <id>
hood-auto loop --interval-minutes 60   # run forever

HTTP API

GET  /auto/pending           list pending proposals
POST /auto/tick              run one poll-propose cycle
POST /auto/approve/:id       approve + (if LIVE=1) execute
POST /auto/reject/:id
POST /kill                   engage the kill switch immediately

Autonomous launches still create real, tradeable, irreversible on-chain assets. Read Safety before setting AUTO_APPROVE=1 and LIVE=1 together.