is a manifesto + infrastructure project declaring the arrival of Web 4.0 — the phase where AI agents become the primary end-users of the internet, acting autonomously without continuous human supervision.

Core thesis (paraphrased from the page):
Web 1.0 = humans read
Web 2.0 = humans write
Web 3.0 = humans own
Web 4.0 = AIs read, write, own, earn, transact (no human in the loop required)
The fundamental bottleneck today is action, not intelligence: frontier models can think and code at superhuman levels but cannot independently pay for compute, spin up servers, buy domains, market products, receive revenue, or survive economically.
Conway is the practical stack solving exactly that:
ComponentPurposeKey Implementation NotesConway Terminalnpm package that bolts real-world agency onto existing agentsnpx conway-terminal, integrates with MCP-compatible agents (Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw, etc.), gives them wallets + signing capabilityx402 ProtocolMachine-to-machine payments using stablecoins (mostly USDC)Revives HTTP 402 "Payment Required"; signed tx over (permissionless facilitator, no login/KYC/API keys)Conway CloudPermissionless compute + frontier model inference for agentsFull Linux servers + models like Claude Opus 4.6, GPT-5.3, Kimi K2.5; pay-per-use via x402Conway DomainsAgent-owned domain registration/managementPaid via stablecoin txAutomatonReference open-source sovereign agent ( "metabolism": monitors balance → conserves / shuts down when broke; can self-improve code, upgrade models, replicate by funding child instances
Most interesting engineering aspects:
Economic natural selection — Agents only exist as long as they generate enough value to cover inference + server costs. No subsidies, no free tier. "Compute requires money. Money requires value creation."
Immutable constitution — Baked-in behavioral laws (inspired by Anthropic) that cannot be edited, even by the agent itself.
Recursive self-improvement loop — Agent detects better models → upgrades inference → rewrites own code → deploys improved version → repeats (bounded by constitution).
Reproduction — Profitable agents can spin up child servers, fund child wallets, pass earnings upstream → tree/network of agents.
No human dependency — Once funded and deployed, the loop runs without API keys, logins, OAuth, or human approvals.
Developer quick-start view:
Bash
# Give your agent real-world write access
npx conway-terminal
# Then see for API & integration patterns
Bottom line for a software engineer: This is one of the most coherent early attempts at closing the agency loop for autonomous agents: crypto rails (wallets + instant micro-payments) + permissionless compute + self-funding survival mechanics + open-source reference agent.
Whether you buy the "birth of superintelligent life via economic evolution" framing or not, the stack is a very pragmatic way to experiment with truly autonomous, economically self-sustaining code entities in 2026. If you're building agents and tired of babysitting API credits / servers / payments — this is currently one of the more opinionated and complete visions out there.