Get started

Catena documentation

Catena is a governance and banking platform for AI agents. We give your agents access to your organization's accounts under rules that you set. Sign up at app.catena.com.

Your feedback is welcome, and the more specific (for example, the command you ran and the error you saw), the better. Your agent can send a note to the Catena team with catena feedback, and you can email us at support@catena.com.

Start hereQuickstartConnect a terminal agent to a sandbox and make a test payment. AgentsConnect an agentUse the CLI, an MCP connector, or a secret key, depending on where the agent runs. SolutionsRecipes and integrationsSteps for common tasks, and setup for Claude Code, Codex, and other agent tools. API & SDK referenceAgent APIThe signed agent API, and the TypeScript SDK and CLI built on it.

Overview

Catena is built from a handful of parts that work together:

  1. Organization: Your organization holds the accounts, and each person on your team has a role: viewer, operator, or admin. Accounts hold stablecoins on more than one chain (USDC on Base and Arc, and OUSD on Base).
  2. Agents: An agent is an identity in your organization. You'll connect that identity to the software that runs the agent, whether that is a coding agent in a terminal, a desktop app (such as Claude or ChatGPT), or a service you deploy.
  3. Policies: A policy sets what the agent can do. It grants access per account, sets spending rules, and lists the counterparties the agent can pay. Each rule will either block an action or send it to a person for approval.
  4. Intents: Every governed action an agent takes is an intent. When the agent sends money, adds a counterparty, or asks for a temporary limit increase, Catena will record an intent and check it against the policy. Depending on the result, the intent will complete, wait for approval, or be blocked.
  5. Approvals: Admins approve or deny intents in the console. Once a payment is approved, it will be signed and submitted, and it will then settle or fail. See Approval and execution for details.

These terms can get a little abstract, so we define each of them in How Catena works.

Markdown and the CLI guide

Every page on this site is also available as Markdown, so your agents can read the same docs you do. llms.txt lists every page with a one-line summary, and each page has a Markdown version at its URL with .md added (e.g., /policies.md).

After you install the CLI, catena guide prints the operating guide for the installed version. If the guide and these pages differ, follow the guide.

Get help

There are a few places to go when you need help:

Updated October 29, 2026 View as Markdown