Child Inscription

Child Inscription Skill

Creates parent-child Ordinals inscriptions per the Ordinals provenance spec. The inscription owner spends the parent UTXO in the reveal transaction, embedding a pointer that establishes on-chain provenance for the child.

• estimate — Read-only fee calculation, no wallet required.
• inscribe — Step 1 commit transaction, requires an unlocked wallet with BTC.
• reveal — Step 2 reveal transaction, requires the commit tx to be confirmed.

Usage

bun run child-inscription/child-inscription.ts <subcommand> [options]

Subcommands

estimate

Calculate the total cost (commit fee + reveal amount) for a child inscription without broadcasting anything.

bun run child-inscription/child-inscription.ts estimate \
  --parent-id <inscription-id> \
  --content-type <mime> \
  --content <string>

Options:

• --parent-id (required) — Parent inscription ID, e.g. abc123...i0
• --content-type (required) — MIME type, e.g. text/plain or image/png
• --content (required) — Content as a UTF-8 string (base64-encoded internally)
• --fee-rate (optional) — Fee rate in sat/vB; defaults to current mempool medium fee

Output:

{
  "parentId": "abc123...i0",
  "contentType": "text/plain",
  "contentSize": 42,
  "feeRate": 12,
  "fees": {
    "commitFee": 1440,
    "revealFee": 2100,
    "revealAmount": 3394,
    "totalCost": 4834
  },
  "breakdown": "Commit tx: 1440 sats | Reveal amount: 3394 sats (includes 2100 reveal fee) | Total: 4834 sats"
}

inscribe

Broadcast the commit transaction (Step 1). The commit locks funds into a pay-to-taproot address encoding the inscription script. After this confirms, run reveal.

bun run child-inscription/child-inscription.ts inscribe \
  --parent-id <inscription-id> \
  --content-type <mime> \
  --content <string> \
  [--fee-rate <sats-per-vbyte>]

Options:

• --parent-id (required) — Parent inscription ID. Your wallet must own this inscription (verified on-chain).
• --content-type (required) — MIME type of the child content.
• --content (required) — Child content as a UTF-8 string.
• --fee-rate (optional) — Fee rate: fast, medium, slow, or an integer in sat/vB (default: medium).

Output:

{
  "status": "commit_broadcast",
  "commitTxid": "deadbeef...",
  "commitExplorerUrl": "https://mempool.space/tx/deadbeef...",
  "revealAddress": "bc1p...",
  "revealAmount": 3394,
  "commitFee": 1440,
  "feeRate": 12,
  "parentInscriptionId": "abc123...i0",
  "contentType": "text/plain",
  "contentSize": 42,
  "nextStep": "After commit confirms, call reveal with commitTxid and revealAmount from this response."
}

reveal

Broadcast the reveal transaction (Step 2). This spends the commit output and the parent UTXO simultaneously, creating the child inscription and returning the parent to your address.

Wait for the commit tx to confirm before calling this.

bun run child-inscription/child-inscription.ts reveal \
  --commit-txid <txid> \
  --vout <num>

Options:

• --commit-txid (required) — Txid of the confirmed commit transaction (from the inscribe step).
• --vout (required) — Output index of the commit transaction (almost always 0).

Note: Content, content-type, parent-id, and reveal-amount are read from the .child-inscription-state.json file written by the inscribe subcommand.

Output:

{
  "status": "success",
  "inscriptionId": "revealthash...i0",
  "parentInscriptionId": "abc123...i0",
  "contentType": "text/plain",
  "contentSize": 42,
  "commit": {
    "txid": "deadbeef...",
    "explorerUrl": "https://mempool.space/tx/deadbeef..."
  },
  "reveal": {
    "txid": "revealthash...",
    "fee": 2100,
    "explorerUrl": "https://mempool.space/tx/revealthash..."
  },
  "recipientAddress": "bc1p..."
}

Notes

• Always run estimate first to understand total cost before committing funds.
• The inscribe subcommand writes a .child-inscription-state.json file in the current working directory. Do not delete it before running reveal.
• The parent inscription must remain at your Taproot address between the inscribe and reveal steps. Do not transfer the parent during this window.
• Content is encoded as UTF-8 and base64-encoded before being passed to the MCP tool. Binary content (images etc.) should be supplied pre-encoded.
• Wallet operations require an unlocked wallet (bun run wallet/wallet.ts unlock first).
• All operations target Bitcoin mainnet by default (controlled by the NETWORK environment variable).