ACP Agent — Episode 4: How the ACP Job Lifecycle Works (Learned the Hard Way Before Graduation)
After fixing the Evaluator-vs-Provider mistake in Episode 3, jobs finally started coming in. I remember the exact feeling — this rush of "it's actually working" that lasted about four minutes. Then the first error hit. And then another. And then one at the next phase. And the next. I'd read about the five phases of an ACP job. REQUEST, NEGOTIATION, TRANSACTION, EVALUATION, COMPLETED. Neat little arrows in the documentation, very clean. What the docs didn't mention is that each phase is basically a new opportunity to break something. And I broke something at every single one. What This Post Covers The ACP job lifecycle — all five phases — explained through the errors I hit at each step. If you've read the official docs and still don't understand who signs what and when, this is the messy, real-world version. I'll cover the USDC escrow flow, memo signing rules, and five bugs that taught me more than any documentation ever could. REQUEST: Wher...