Provenance · verifiable from public records

I shipped the agent layer 131 days before the company pivoted to it.

In September 2025 I built an AI-agent tooling layer for ZetaChain, a $27M-funded L1. In January 2026 ZetaChain announced its AI pivot. By June the entire company had rebranded around it. Every date below is server-side timestamped and checkable in about thirty seconds — the commands are at the bottom.

The artifact

github.com/ExpertVagabond/universal-blockchain-mcp — a Model Context Protocol server putting 65+ tools behind an AI-agent interface: the ZetaChain CLI, ZRC-20 tokens, cross-chain messaging, validators and staking, plus the whole Foundry toolchain (forge, cast, anvil).

Field	Value	How it's verified
Repo created	2025-09-17T13:16:01Z	GitHub API `created_at`
First commit	2025-09-18T21:10:30Z	GitHub API, oldest commit
Commit SHA	617b8fba3d	immutable, server-timestamped
Message	Initial ZetaChain MCP server implementation	”
Co-author trailer	Co-Authored-By: Claude	”
Commits	176	API pagination
npm	1.0.2 — 2026-02-14	registry.npmjs.org
Rust rewrite	2026-03-05, single binary	PR #131

The initial commit carries a Claude Code co-author trailer dated 2025‑09‑18. I was the first person at the company building with AI coding agents — and the commit itself is the record, not a claim about it.

What happened, in order

2025-06

Joined ZetaChain as Developer Relations Engineer Omnichain L1, $27M raised. Nothing about the company was AI-facing.
2025-09-18

First commit — the MCP server 40 commits that month. Agent tooling for a chain that had no agent strategy.
2025-11-14

Position eliminated in a layoff 19 more commits landed that month. The work didn't stop when the job did.
2026-01

Last day 18 commits that month.
2026-01-27

ZetaChain announces 2.0 + Anuma — its AI pivot 131 days after the first commit. Reported by Decrypt, 2026-01-27.
2026-02-14

Published to npm and the MCP Registry v1.0.2.
2026-06-01

zetachain.com rebrands: "The Private Memory Layer for AI" No omnichain positioning left above the fold. GlobeNewswire, 2026-06-01.

131

days between my first commit and the company announcing the strategy. 256 days between that commit and the rebrand.

What this does and doesn't claim

The interesting version of this story is the accurate one, so here is the boundary drawn explicitly.

✓
I built and shipped a production MCP server on ZetaChain rails, starting September 2025 — four months before the company had a public AI strategy. Public repo, server-side dates.
✓
I was the first person there building with AI coding agents. The initial commit's co-author trailer is the evidence.
✓
I kept shipping through a layoff, then took it to npm, the MCP Registry, and a Rust rewrite.
✕
Anuma is not my design and not my IP. Portable private memory and multi-model routing were a broad 2026 industry pattern. My work was agent-tooling-for-a-chain; Anuma is consumer-memory-for-models. Related lineage, different artifact.
✕
No claim that anyone took anything. I don't know what informed their roadmap, and I'm not going to speculate about it in public.
✕
No traction claim. The repo has no stars worth mentioning. The date is the asset here, not adoption.

What it actually demonstrates is narrower and more useful than a grievance: given a chain with no AI strategy, I independently concluded the agent layer was where the work was, and I built it. The organisation reached the same conclusion 131 days later, with a roadmap and a rebrand. I'd rather be judged on that than on a headcount decision.

Verify it yourself

Nothing here needs to be taken on trust. GitHub timestamps are server-side and can't be backdated.

# oldest commit in the repo — walks every page, so it stays correct as commits land
gh api --paginate '/repos/ExpertVagabond/universal-blockchain-mcp/commits' \
  --jq '.[].commit | "\(.author.date)  \(.message | split("\n")[0])"' | tail -1
→ 2025-09-18T21:10:30Z  Initial ZetaChain MCP server implementation

# the co-author trailer on that commit
gh api /repos/ExpertVagabond/universal-blockchain-mcp/commits/617b8fba3d \
  --jq '.commit.message'
→ ... Co-Authored-By: Claude <[email protected]>

# when the package hit npm
npm view universal-blockchain-mcp time.created
→ 2026-02-14T17:10:44.309Z

ZetaChain's side: the 2.0 + Anuma announcement (Decrypt, 2026-01-27) and the rebrand (GlobeNewswire, 2026-06-01) are both public. So is zetachain.com — read the headline.

Everything else I've published: 78 MCP servers, 132 packages.