The six rules that stop AI agent runaway spending
Every documented incident in this registry is preventable with one or more of these rule types. They enforce before the money moves — no prompts, no hoping.
Per-transaction cap
Reject any single proposed charge above a dollar amount.
max_amount_usd: 500
7 incidents stopped →
Daily / period total
Hard ceiling on total spend across a day, week, or month.
daily_max_usd: 200
10 incidents stopped →
Velocity limit
Cap the number of transactions per minute/hour, not just dollars.
max_per_minute: 20
7 incidents stopped →
Merchant allowlist
Only named vendors may ever be paid; everyone else is FLAGGED.
allow: [openai.com, stripe.com]
3 incidents stopped →
Category rule
Separate budgets per category (compute, SaaS, data, ads).
category: compute, daily_max_usd: 50
5 incidents stopped →
Time-of-day rule
Block or FLAG spend outside working hours.
block_after: "22:00", block_before: "07:00"
4 incidents stopped →
Enforce them all with sipi.bot
The pre-spend firewall evaluates every transaction in <5ms. Self-host the MIT core free or run it hosted. Each rule takes one line to configure.