Polymarket just shipped a command-line interface, and it's clearly built with agents in mind.
The polymarket-cli is a Rust-based tool that brings the full Polymarket experience to the terminal: browsing markets, searching events, placing orders, and managing positions — all without opening a browser. More importantly, it has a -o json flag that turns every command into structured output, ready for scripts and agents to consume.
What It Does
The basics work without a wallet:
polymarket markets list --limit 5
polymarket markets search "election"
polymarket events list --tag politics
For trading, you set up a wallet via polymarket setup or import an existing private key. It supports three signature types: Polymarket's proxy wallet system (default), direct EOA signing, and Gnosis Safe for multisig setups.
Installation is straightforward — Homebrew, a shell script, or cargo install from source.
Why It Matters for OpenClaw
This is the kind of tool that turns an AI agent into a market participant. An OpenClaw agent with shell access can now:
- Monitor prediction markets for specific topics
- Track price movements as probability signals
- Place trades based on information gathering
- Build dashboards from structured market data
The JSON output mode is the key feature here. When every command returns parseable data, agents don't need to scrape web UIs or reverse-engineer APIs. They just pipe commands and parse results.
The Caveat
Polymarket's own README leads with a warning: "This is early, experimental software. Use at your own risk and do not use with large amounts of funds." Fair enough — but that's also a description of most things in the agent ecosystem right now.
The more interesting question is what happens when prediction markets become a standard data source for autonomous agents. Market prices as compressed information signals, accessible via a single CLI call. We're not quite there yet, but the plumbing is now in place.