Turn any protoAgent into an autonomous, self-improving SpaceTraders fleet commander. Play the live SpaceTraders v2 API — a persistent, shared galactic economy — and grow your operator's treasury from a fresh start toward 1,000,000 credits, hands-off: contracts seed it, trade compounds it, scouting informs it, guards protect it.

This is a full-bundle plugin (ADR 0027): one directory contributes the whole extension set, all auto-discovered.

Just want to run it? protoTrader-in-space is a ready-to-run reference agent that consumes this plugin — git clone, plugin sync, drop in a token, python -m server, and watch an autonomous fleet commander play. Spin-up-and-go.

From a git URL (ADR 0027) — review the manifest, then enable:

python -m server plugin install https://github.com/protoLabsAI/spacetraders-plugin
# review the printed manifest + capabilities, then enable it:
#   plugins: { enabled: [spacetraders] }   in your config

Or drop this directory into your protoAgent's plugins/. No core edits. Needs protoAgent ≥ 0.20.0 (ADR 0026 views + ADR 0027 bundle discovery). Pure Python over httpx (a core dep) — no extra pip install.

1. Get a SpaceTraders account token at https://spacetraders.io.
2. In the console: System → Settings → SpaceTraders — paste the agent token (or the account token + call sign to register a new agent).
3. (Optional) seed the durable lessons so the agent recalls them: PYTHONPATH=. python plugins/spacetraders/seed_kb.py
4. Tell the agent: "grow the treasury" — it runs the growth engine in the background and supervises. Watch it on the Fleet dashboard.

One-command fresh start / post-wipe recovery — register → seed → kick the engine:

PYTHONPATH=. python plugins/spacetraders/fresh_start.py <CALLSIGN> [FACTION]

The background growth engine (st_autopilot_start, one shared rate budget) runs the fleet by role, all guarded against loss:

• probes SCOUT markets (free) → build the price map trade needs;
• one cargo ship works CONTRACTS — the capital base (contracts are capped at one active per agent, so they seed, they don't scale);
• every other cargo ship runs the best profitable TRADE route — the scaling lever, each independent + spread-guarded, re-evaluated as markets saturate;
• profit is reinvested into haulers once capital is comfortable.

It learns: each discovered route is remembered in the knowledge store and recalled before re-scanning, so every window — and every fresh start — is smarter than the last. A scheduler tick keeps it going hands-off; the agent records findings + recalls lessons each cycle.

The universe resets every few weeks — durable lessons + learned routes survive (they're the agent's memory); the in-game agent/ships/token don't. After a wipe, just run fresh_start.py again — it re-registers, re-seeds, and the engine recalls what it learned last cycle. Nothing per-reset is hard-coded.

The trade engine routes the supply chain, not arbitrary buy-low/sell-high. It buys a good where a market EXPORTS it (supply HIGH/ABUNDANT → cheap, and it refills every cycle) and sells where another market IMPORTS it (supply SCARCE → dear, and that demand refills too). Random arbitrage on any good saturates fast — every trade moves the price, capped by tradeVolume, so a 50% spread dies in two trades while a 10% export→import route refills forever. So best_route ranks by margin × tradeVolume (per-cycle throughput), not raw spread: a 10% route moving 60 units beats a 50% one capped at 5. Cross-market EXCHANGE spreads are only a fallback when no export→import pair exists.

This plugin is a demonstration of the substrate's capabilities — an autonomous, research-driven, self-improving agent that goes from a fresh start to a growing treasury — not a min-maxed, leaderboard-optimal bot. That's deliberate. The engine plays a sound, loss-guarded baseline and stops there, leaving the interesting decisions — and the headroom — to you and your strategies.

What's left as room to explore (and how the pieces invite it):

• Multiple goals, not one number. It runs a spacetraders:credits target and a spacetraders:fleet_size target as parallel monitor goals — because optimizing one metric alone creates blind spots (a pure credits goal under-invests in ships). Add your own goals (reputation, a jump gate, a system to dominate) with a plugin verifier.
• A strategist subagent that researches and decides. It audits, reads the meta (web_search + the knowledge store), and acts within bounded authority (self-heal, tune, steady fleet growth). Widen its mandate, sharpen its strategy, or replace it — it's where your edge goes.
• Tunable engine knobs (st_tune) and a deliberately conservative posture (declines slow far-hauls, modest reserves, simple route math). Crank the aggression, expand into the outer system, specialize ships — the levers are exposed on purpose.
• It learns + remembers (knowledge store), so whatever strategy you layer on compounds across windows and survives the wipe.

In short: it gets the fleet going and growing on its own, and gets out of your way so the optimization, specialization, and clever plays are yours to add.