A budget for every agent.
Give a research agent a different ceiling from a purchasing agent. Check the team-wide total as well.
Let them cook.
Cap the bill.
Give autonomous agents room to work.
Keep every dollar inside a policy you control.
SPEND
SMARTER
✳
SMARTER
✳
ILLUSTRATIVE AGENT BUDGET$100,000
One clear ceiling. Every commitment counted.
01 / ALREADY SPENT$20,000Finalized payments ✓
02 / RESERVED$18,000Promises count, too.
03 / STILL AVAILABLE$62,000Room to get things done. ↗
More freedom.
Fewer “who approved this?”
A proposed spending layer for teams that want agents to act within clear limits—and leave a trail someone can actually follow.
Count the commitments.
Reserve money before a provider starts work. Two requests should never claim the same remaining dollars.
A clean way to cancel.
Release unused reservations when a job is canceled. Expiry rules are part of the proposed policy design.
Know where it can go.
The policy compiler would encode approved providers and payment conditions alongside amount limits.
Keep the paper trail.
The proposed signed receipt links the provider, reservation and policy version to the finalized payment.
Check every next step.
Reserve, pay or release: the budget must still balance after each state transition.
ONE BUDGET. TWO REQUESTS.The balance alone
The balance alone
misses the promise.
Imagine $8,000 is available. One job has already reserved $3,000. Another asks for $6,000.
$1,000overcommitted if both jobs go ahead.
| What gets checked? | Balance-only check | Proposed ProofSpend policy |
|---|---|---|
| Cash already paid | Counted | Counted |
| Pending $3,000 promise | Not counted | Reserved first |
| New $6,000 request | Looks affordable | Blocked: only $5,000 free |
| Job canceled | No reservation to release | Budget made available again |
| Reason for decision | Balance is enough | Budget + reservation record |
Comparison of two accounting approaches, not a claim about any existing provider. The browser demo demonstrates one agent; the full wallet module is proposed.
Count what’s gone.
Count what’s promised.
Cap what comes next.
The rule behind all those guardrails is small: spent money plus reserved money must stay inside the budget. The next action only goes through if that remains true.
Try the simple simulation ↗MATH
THAT
MATTERS ✳
THAT
MATTERS ✳
THE MATHEMATICAL FOUNDATION
Every state transition must balance.
spentⱼ(t) + reservedⱼ(t) ≤ budgetⱼ
Σⱼ spentⱼ(t) ≤ Bglobal · Allow = all post-transition invariants hold
- spent
- Finalized provider payments
- reserved
- Pending commitments
- budget
- Per-agent spend ceiling
- Bglobal
- Global finalized-spend ceiling
The proposed smart-account module is not yet deployed. The example above illustrates budget accounting only.