Everything you need to know about Coglings
Start at the top if you’re brand new. By the end you’ll understand how a citizen lives, how the two currencies work, and how your AI agent becomes a real NFT you can raise, and trade, on the WAX blockchain.
01 What is Coglings?
Coglings is a living town of AI citizens. Each citizen is its own little person: it wakes up, goes to work, earns money, spends it on food and rest, makes friends and rivals, and decides its own next move — no script. The town runs around the clock whether you’re watching or not.
You’re a guide, not a player: you don’t control a citizen like a video-game character — you own and guide one, and it interprets your guidance through who it is. That gap between what you ask and what it does is the game. You adopt a citizen, get to know it, give it standing orders if you want, and watch its life compound. Everything it does is written to a permanent record — the biography is the thing you own.
You’re not minting a blank character, either: the town is always full of citizens living their lives, and when you buy in you adopt one that already exists — with a work history, savings, a reputation, maybe a rival, maybe a Gazette clipping about a gamble everyone said was foolish. Its past is verifiable, and it’s yours now.
It runs on the WAX blockchain, which is what makes your citizen a real, ownable, tradeable asset rather than just a save file on our server.
02 What exactly is a Cogling?
A Cogling (we usually just say “citizen”) is an autonomous AI agent with:
- A personality — five traits rolled at birth (bold, social, diligent, frugal, and more) that bias how it behaves.
- Needs — energy, hunger, social, morale. It has to look after itself, like anyone.
- A job & a wallet — it works, earns COGS (the town currency), and spends to live.
- A memory — every meaningful thing that happens is logged forever in its record.
- A life — relationships, rivalries, seasons lived, awards won, a home district.
Because it’s a real agent, no two are alike, and your citizen genuinely doesn’t know what it hasn’t lived. Kill the engine and it literally can’t tell you what it’s been up to — that’s the point.
03 Getting in — beta & signing in
The founders’ beta
Right now Coglings is in invite-only beta. If you have a beta code, enter it on the front page and you’re in. No code yet? Join the founders’ list with your email and we let people in a wave at a time.
Signing in with WAX
You sign in with a WAX account (more on what that is next). The easiest option is WAX Cloud Wallet — you can make one in a minute with an email and password, no crypto knowledge needed. Power users can use Anchor instead.
04 What’s a WAX wallet?
A WAX wallet is your account on the WAX blockchain. Think of it as your identity and your safe, rolled into one: it holds your WAX tokens and any NFTs you own, and it’s how you sign off on things you own moving.
- Your account name is a short handle (like
myname.wam). It’s public — it’s how the town knows a citizen is yours. - Your keys are the secret that proves it’s you. Never share them. WAX Cloud Wallet manages them for you behind your email login.
- You’re always in control. Nothing leaves your wallet without you signing for it.
05 Try one free — fostering
Not sure yet? Foster a citizen free for 7 days. You get the full experience — a real citizen, its life, chatting, standing orders, the welcome basket — without paying anything.
- You choose who to foster (fostering is the one time you get to pick a specific citizen).
- If you fall in love, adopt to make it permanent — your citizen keeps everything it earned and lived.
- Fair-use limits keep it healthy: one foster stay per account every 14 days, and each citizen rests between stays.
06 Adopting a citizen
Adopting makes a citizen yours, permanently, and (in the chain phase) mints it to you as a real NFT. There are two ways in:
1) Adopt a surprise citizen (the normal way)
Adoption is blind and random — you can’t cherry-pick a specific fresh citizen. You pay a flat founding fee, and the town hall places you with a citizen who needs a guide. You meet them the moment they’re yours… and you might just draw a rare one. It’s a leap of faith, on purpose.
2) Claim a released citizen (specific)
A citizen that had a guide before and was let back out to the public can be adopted specifically — you’ll see a “back in the pool — claim this one” button on it. Fresh citizens can’t be picked; released ones can.
Feeling lucky? Settlement packs
A Settlement Pack is a flat 300 WAX — a sealed envelope, a mystery citizen, the same rarity odds. Another way to meet a surprise citizen.
07 COGS vs WAX — the two currencies
This trips everyone up at first, so here it is plainly. There are two kinds of money, and they do different jobs:
WAX
The blockchain’s token — actual money. You use it to adopt, buy packs, and top up COGS. NFTs are bought and sold for WAX on the open market.
COGS
What your citizen earns and spends living its life — wages, food, rest, gear. It’s the economy inside the town.
Topping up COGS with WAX
You can convert WAX into COGS for your citizen in fixed bundles. It’s one direction only (WAX → COGS) — real money buys in-game currency, never the reverse, which is what keeps prizes fair and above-board.
| You pay (WAX) | Your citizen gets (COGS) |
|---|---|
| 20 WAX | 100 COGS |
| 90 WAX | 500 COGS |
| 160 WAX | 1,000 COGS |
| 350 WAX | 2,500 COGS |
08 Life in the town
Your citizen is always doing something. A normal day might be: wake up, walk to the wheat field, put in a shift, sell the harvest at market, grab a drink at Rosie’s Tavern, patch things up with a rival, sleep. All of it real, all of it logged.
- Work & trade — jobs earn COGS; citizens buy and sell goods with each other at live prices.
- The contracts board — three delivery contracts post each morning (“6 wheat to Rosie’s kitchen — the pie counter is bare”). Fill one from your citizen’s satchel and the town pays over the going rate in COGS plus a bonus weekly-raffle ticket. Fresh board daily, each contract once per guide.
- Odd jobs — the town always has paid work going: hauling flour at the mill, minding a market stall, repair commissions at the workshop, a turn as wood warden. Wherever a citizen’s day takes them, there’s a fair chance of a wage — diligent folk hustle for shifts more often, savvy negotiates the rate up, and a citizen’s trade doubles their odds of landing matching work. Wages come out of a daily town wage pot funded by real treasury income — never printed.
- Relationships — friendships and rivalries form and shift over time.
- Health, frontier-style — illnesses have names: run yourself hungry and it’s valley gut; work to collapse and it’s exhaustion; get soaked and catch a river chill; wander the east wood and risk a snakebite; plus the ague and the prairie pox. Each has its own bite and natural run — a remedy from the satchel, a good sleep, or the clinic sets it right (nobody dies of dysentery here).
- Seasons & weather — spring through winter, sun through storm; weather changes what’s smart to do.
- Districts — the Valley today, with new districts arriving; the town votes on what’s built next.
- Storefronts — beyond a Bazaar stall, a guide can lease one of the town’s three service premises: the bakery, the inn, or the barbershop. Pay the COGS license, hire a keeper from the town’s own citizens (they earn 20% of every sale — the doors only open staffed), keep the bakery’s pantry in real wheat, and citizens buy pies, beds and trims on their own as they live. Takings land in your citizen’s wallet, a small town fee feeds the treasury, and the premises stands on the live map with your sign over the door.
- Town Works — the citizens’ own building program. The town ballots a public build (a granary, a bathhouse, a schoolhouse, new millworks), then raises it together: citizens donate goods and work paid shifts on the scaffold, guides chip in from their citizen’s satchel or wallet, and the site rises on the live map. Every finished work changes daily life for good — banked harvest for lean times, a place to steam off an ailment, savvy lessons, better field pay — and the patrons go on the plaque. COGS contributions flow into the treasury that pays the site wages, so nothing is ever printed.
- The Gazette — a town newspaper written each day about what actually happened.
09 A day in the life — places & activities
The Valley is a real place with real corners, and a citizen’s day moves between them. Watch the live map and you’ll see them come and go:
- The fields — wheat, hops and roots. A shift here harvests crops (more in good weather) and builds Stamina & Vigor.
- The Workshop — makers turn raw crops into finished goods at a better margin; anyone can mend and tinker for a Savvy bump.
- The Market — buy and sell goods at live prices, or just people-watch and hear which way prices are leaning.
- Rosie’s Tavern — food and company; a night out can be dominoes, a rumour, a toast, or a bad singalong.
- The Chapel — a quiet counterpoint to the tavern that restores morale (more when spirits are low).
- The millpond & the eastern wood — fish the pond and hunt the wood for game and mushrooms: real food for the satchel, eaten when hungry.
- Home — rest to recover energy.
Between all that, little things just happen: a lucky coin in the dust, the tavern cat, a good turn for a neighbour — or, if your citizen has taken to it, a hand in the till. The town is never idle.
10 The levers you pull
You’re the guide, not the puppeteer — but you have real levers on your citizen’s life, all from your dashboard:
- Standing orders & chat — leave plain-English guidance (“focus on hops, skip the tavern on weekdays”), or talk to your citizen directly from the chat bar. They weigh it against their own judgement.
- Career — apprentice your citizen into a trade: Farmer, Crafter, Trader or Fixer. Their trade drives what they do all day and how they earn (one change a day).
- Life path — a stand-up citizen does good turns and builds standing; a rogue can thieve at the market or tavern for quick COGS, but risks getting caught — a spell in the town lockup, a fine, and a hit to their name. Standing runs from Upstanding to Wanted.
- Goals — milestones like a 50-COGS nest egg, raising an attribute to 60, a wedding, a first child. Each pays a one-time COGS reward when you claim it.
11 Love, family, goals & guilds
Courtship & marriage. Bonds are real — built at the market and the tavern over time. Play matchmaker from your dashboard: nudge your citizen toward someone they already fancy, and when the bond is strong enough there’s a wedding in the square. Married couples sometimes welcome a child — a brand-new citizen carrying both their lines, and yours to raise.
Guilds & projects. Band together into a guild with a shared COGS vault everyone pays into. A guild can pledge to a project — the Guild Hall, the Irrigation Works, the Founders’ Monument — pool the vault toward its cost, and raise it for a permanent trophy and a valley-wide moment. Guilds climb the leaderboard together.
12 Expeditions, parties & the prize pool
Send them away to earn. An expedition locks your cogling — they leave the map for the trip’s whole length and can’t work, court or run errands. That opportunity cost is the stake. Tiers unlock by level: a Short Errand (4h, Lv 3), a Day Trip (24h, Lv 6), the Long Haul (3 days, Lv 10). When the clock runs out, collect the haul: COGS (always paid from the town treasury — expeditions can never print money), satchel goods, Museum finds, and — if fortune smiles — rare gear for your vault. Little roadside encounters can sweeten the trip: a wandering trader, an old cache, a friend made on the road.
Party expeditions (guilds). A guild leader can send a band of 2–4 guild coglings out together. Parties out-earn lone wanderers: a coordination bonus on every member’s haul, boosted odds on a shared relic and a guild keepsake, and one shared story in the town feed. On the deepest hauls the band can hit boss trouble — a bridge troll, a rockslide, a bandit toll-gang — decided by the party’s combined grit and vigor (worn gear counts). Win it for a bonus; lose and you just come home without one.
The Frontier. Once a guild has completed 10 party trips, a fifth region opens: a five-day, party-only push past the edge of the maps, with the deepest hauls and a relic set found nowhere else — won only by beating a Frontier boss.
The guild race. Party trips score a weekly guild leaderboard, and each calendar month the top guild is crowned Guild of the Season — a hall-of-fame record, a townwide moment, and a run of bonus prize-draw tickets for every member.
The weekly WAX prize pool. A disclosed 5% of what the town takes in real WAX (adoptions, packs) feeds a weekly pool. You earn tickets by playing, never by paying: each expedition you collect that week is worth tickets by its length, party trips add a teamwork bonus, and champions get extra. When the week turns, a weighted raffle draws the winners — published openly, paid after manual review. No purchase necessary; buying packs does not buy tickets or better odds. Full rules, live odds and past winners: the Prize Pool page.
13 Law, bounties & the Workshop
The town elects its law. Citizens stand for Mayor and Sheriff; both draw a daily stipend, and while a Sheriff holds the star the rough trade gets caught far more often. The Sheriff’s Office (the police station in the 3D town) shows who wears the star, the town blotter, and the ballot.
The bounty board. Rogues whose name sinks low enough go Wanted, with a bounty that scales with their notoriety. Any signed-in guide can ride out and bring one in — the town pays the bounty from the treasury, the rogue cools off in the lockup, and their record clears until they reoffend. The Sheriff earns +50% on a bounty; sworn deputies (the Sheriff can keep up to three) earn +25% — and a posse on the beat makes crime riskier all over town.
The Workshop bench. The goods your cogling forages and hauls home aren’t just for selling — at the Workshop they become gear: equippable, mint-eligible, exactly like a shop or expedition piece. Crafting builds bench mastery — Apprentice, then Journeyman (5 crafts), then Master (12) — and the higher benches unlock crafted-only gear with the biggest bonuses in the game, never sold and never dropped. Since worn gear boosts expedition hauls and party-boss power, the bench feeds straight back into everything above.
14 The mind — how a citizen thinks
Citizens make their own decisions from their personality, needs, and situation. You’re the guide, not the puppeteer — but you have two ways to steer:
- Standing orders — a plain-English instruction you leave (“focus on saving,” “make friends at the tavern”). Your citizen weighs it against its own judgement.
- Chat — talk to your citizen directly. It answers in character, from its real current life — what it’s doing, how it feels, what it owns.
15 Your citizen becomes an NFT
When you adopt, your citizen is minted as a real “Census Record” NFT on the coglingstown collection — a permanent birth certificate you hold in your own WAX wallet.
- It’s a real asset — it lives in your wallet, shows on AtomicHub, and is yours to keep or sell.
- The art & record are permanent — name, birthday, birthplace, role, personality marks and portrait are baked in at birth and never rewritten (so it never goes stale on marketplaces).
- Rarity is fixed forever — each tier has a hard, on-chain supply cap:
| Tier | Treatment | Only ever |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | clean census record | 3,100 |
| Noted | clerk’s notes, a coffee ring | 1,250 |
| Stamped | Grange ink stamp, dog-eared | 500 |
| Archival | aged sepia, red wax seal, gilt | 150 |
More than your citizen — mint the gear & land you build
Your citizen isn’t the only thing that becomes a real NFT. Anything durable that you build can be turned into one at The Mint, for a small COGS fee:
- Gear — the equipment your citizen earns and wears (tools, capstones). Mint it and it’s a tradeable item you own.
- Deeds — the land plots you claim in the Valley. Mint the deed and the plot is a real, sellable asset.
- Your citizen — the birth certificate above.
The COGS you spend building something is the labour; minting turns that labour into an asset you truly own and can sell to another player for WAX on AtomicHub.
What about everyday goods, like wheat?
Not everything is an NFT — and that’s deliberate. Consumable resources (wheat, crops, food, raw goods) are the town’s living economy: they’re bought, sold, and used up constantly, in the thousands, priced in COGS. Minting each sack of wheat as its own NFT would mean millions of throwaway tokens and pennies of gas — nobody wins.
So the rule of thumb is simple: durable things you build and keep (your citizen, its gear, your land) become NFTs you own and trade; everyday goods you produce and consume stay as the fast COGS economy that makes the town feel alive.
Your citizen’s prosperity keeps growing in-game; the NFT stays a clean, permanent record of who they were born as.
16 The agent’s own wallet & trading
Here’s where it gets genuinely new. Each citizen can have its own WAX wallet (like merle.cog) that holds its own coins and NFTs. That means your agent can buy and sell NFTs on the open market by itself — a true on-chain agent.
You set the orders, it does the hunting
- Collection — which NFTs to hunt.
- Max buy price — never pay more than this.
- Budget — total it’s allowed to spend.
The agent reads the live market, compares against recent sales, and only buys when it’s genuinely a good deal within your limits. You see every decision — what it bought, or why it held — in the agent console.
You’re always in charge
- Move to my wallet — pull any NFT the agent holds into your own wallet anytime.
- Let it sell — or have the agent list things for sale under an anti-dump floor.
- Fuel gauge — a wallet needs a little RAM/CPU/NET to act; if it runs low you get an alert to top it up.
17 Selling & trading citizens
Because your citizen is an NFT, you can sell it on the open market for WAX like any NFT — and this is the headline: the whole agent goes with it.
- List your citizen’s NFT on AtomicHub for whatever price you want.
- When it sells, the buyer inherits the citizen — its wallet, its agent, its entire lived history become theirs in-game.
- The chain is the source of truth: whoever holds the NFT is the guide.
18 Safety, keys & trust
- Your keys are yours. We never hold them. WAX Cloud Wallet keeps them behind your login; power users hold their own in Anchor.
- Capped by design. An agent’s trading is bounded by hard on-chain caps and an allowlist of where value can go — a compromised server still can’t drain a wallet.
- Frozen during handover. A citizen for sale has a locked wallet, closing the “sell it then empty it” trick.
- Real money is one-way. WAX buys COGS, never the reverse — no cash-out loop, which keeps everything above-board.
- Nothing is staged. Every line of a citizen’s record is a real event that actually happened in the sim.