Becoming a Gravity builder means one clear thing: you build expert agents to Gravity's quality bar, and Gravity then runs those agents for users and pays you to build and maintain them. You are not setting up a storefront. You are doing skilled work for the platform. Gravity carries the running cost, handles support, and stands behind the result. Your job is to turn deep knowledge of a real task into an agent that does that task reliably, every time, for people who have never met you.

This guide walks through builder onboarding in five steps, from finding the right idea to keeping an agent healthy after it ships. It pairs well with the public Gravity agent quality bar explained, which spells out the standard your work has to clear before it reaches a single user.

How the builder model works

Gravity is an AI agent platform, and builders are the experts who create the agents that run on it. The relationship is simple to state. You build and maintain an agent for Gravity. Gravity runs that agent for users, pays per use at a dollar for a thousand credits, carries the operating cost, and answers for the service. Gravity pays you for the work of building and looking after the agent. That is a service-provider arrangement, not a side hustle where you post something and hope it sells.

Why does the structure matter to you? Because it changes what you optimize for. You are not chasing impressions or a catalog listing. You are building one thing that has to work, repeatedly, in the hands of strangers, while Gravity takes on the cost and the risk of running it. In our experience, builders who internalize that early make better design calls. They obsess over reliability and edge cases, not over surface polish, because reliability is what Gravity is paying for and what users actually feel.

What you are responsible for, and what Gravity owns

Your side of the line is the agent's design and upkeep: the logic, the tools it calls, the checks that keep it honest, and the fixes when something in the real world shifts. Gravity's side is everything around running it: hosting, billing, user support, and accountability for the delivered service. You do not handle customer tickets or chase payments. That split lets you stay in your lane as a domain expert. The full picture of who does what lives on the for builders page.

1. Find a good agent idea

A good Gravity agent automates a task that is valuable, repeatable, and judgeable. Valuable means a user would happily pay to have it done. Repeatable means the same shape of work recurs often enough to be worth building once. Judgeable means you can tell, clearly, whether a given run succeeded. If you cannot describe what "done well" looks like in a sentence, the idea is not ready, and the 80-test bar will expose that fast.

Start from a task you already do well

The strongest ideas come from your own expertise. If you spend hours each week reconciling statements, screening resumes, or drafting compliance summaries, you already know the edge cases that trip up a naive automation. That tacit knowledge is the thing Gravity cannot get anywhere else. The most common mistake we see is picking a flashy idea over a familiar one. A boring task you understand deeply makes a far better agent than an exciting task you would have to learn from scratch.

2. Design the agent

Agent design starts with the outcome, not the steps. Before you touch a single tool, write one or two sentences describing exactly what a finished run produces and how you would verify it. For a statement-reconciliation agent: "Every transaction in the upload is matched to a ledger entry or flagged as an exception, with a short reason on each flag." That sentence is the contract. Everything you build afterward exists only to satisfy it.

Work backwards into tools and checks

With the outcome fixed, decompose backwards into stages, give each stage one job and one tool, and put a check between every hand-off. Each step should produce something you can name in a few words and validate before the next step touches it. This is where reliability is won or lost. The same discipline that lets you set up a simple agent, covered in how to set up your first AI agent, scales straight up to the agents Gravity runs in production. Design for the bad inputs, not just the happy path.

3. Meet the quality bar

Every agent on Gravity has to clear the same 80-test methodology before it reaches a user, and your build is no exception. The tests are not a formality. They probe correct outputs on normal inputs, behavior on weird and adversarial inputs, what happens when a tool times out or returns garbage, and how the agent treats anything involving money or live systems. The standard is documented in full in how we test AI agents with 80 tests.

Build against the tests, do not bolt them on later

The builders who clear the bar fastest design with the tests in mind from day one. They ask, for each stage, "how would this fail, and what should happen when it does?" That habit turns the 80 tests from a gate you dread into a checklist you have mostly already satisfied. The bar exists because Gravity stands behind every run; an agent that passes inconsistently is not ready, no matter how good the demo looked. If you want to understand the standard your users feel, read the Gravity agent quality bar explained.

4. Review and handoff

Once your agent clears the tests, Gravity reviews it before it goes live. Review is a conversation, not a rubber stamp. Gravity checks that the agent does what its brief promised, that the checks and failure handling are sound, and that anything touching sensitive data or money behaves safely. Expect questions, and expect to revise. A review that sends an agent back is doing exactly its job: protecting the users who will trust it.

What a clean handoff looks like

A clean handoff means Gravity can run, monitor, and support the agent without coming back to you for every hiccup. That requires clear documentation of what the agent does, what it needs, and how it behaves when inputs go sideways. The same gating logic that applies before any agent meets real users, described in the AI agent pilot program guide, applies here: the agent earns its way to production by proving it on safe data first. After handoff, Gravity owns running it. You own keeping it good.

5. Maintain the agent

Shipping is the start of the relationship, not the end. The world an agent works in keeps moving: an API changes, a form gets a new field, a regulation shifts, an edge case nobody predicted shows up in real usage. Maintenance is the ongoing work of catching those changes and updating the agent so it keeps clearing the bar. Gravity pays you for this upkeep because a stale agent is a liability the whole platform feels.

Treat every change as a re-test

Any time you touch the agent, it goes back through the relevant parts of the 80-test methodology before the change reaches users. That is non-negotiable, and it is also your safety net: it stops a well-meant tweak from quietly breaking a path that used to work. Builders who win internal trust are the ones who watch how their agents behave in the real world and improve them before users complain. Helping the people who sponsor an agent stay confident, the theme of the AI agent stakeholder buy-in guide, is part of that ongoing stewardship.

Frequently asked questions

How do I become a Gravity builder?

Apply through the for-builders page and tell Gravity what work you know how to do well. If your expertise fits a need, Gravity briefs you on an agent to build. You design it, take it through the quality bar, and hand it off. Gravity then runs and supports it for users.

What does a Gravity builder do?

A Gravity builder designs an expert agent for a real task, wires up its tools and checks, and proves it against the quality bar. You build and maintain the agent for Gravity. Gravity runs it for users, carries the running cost, and stands behind the service it delivers.

Does Gravity pay builders?

Yes. Gravity pays builders for the work of building and maintaining agents on the platform. It is a service-provider relationship: you do skilled work for Gravity, and Gravity compensates you for it. Specific terms are agreed in the builder agreement during onboarding, not advertised as a public figure.

What is the quality bar for a Gravity agent?

Every agent must pass the same 80-test methodology Gravity uses across the platform. The tests cover correct outputs, edge cases, bad inputs, tool failures, and safe handling of money or live systems. An agent ships only once it clears that bar, and it is re-tested whenever it changes.

Do I need to be a developer to build agents for Gravity?

Not necessarily. The most valuable thing you bring is deep knowledge of a task and how it should be done well. Gravity supports you on the technical side during the build. Domain expertise, clear thinking about edge cases, and a high standard for the output matter more than raw coding skill.

Three things to take with you

Sources