spending and approvals

an agent that can pay for things is only useful if you set the terms. yours has three lines: below the first it just does it, between the first and the second it asks you, above the second it does not happen. you set them, you can only make the hard ones tighter, and every request it makes through InstaClaw is checked against them before it becomes a transaction. this page is the lines, the approvals, the off switch, what sits outside the limits today, and how far the switch-on has got.

what are the three lines?

just do it. a purchase below this amount, while the day's total is under the daily version of it, goes through without asking.

ask me. anything above the just-do-it line and below the hard limit waits for your yes. you get the request where you already are, with what it is for and what it costs, and nothing moves until you answer.

never. above the hard limit per purchase, or once the day's hard ceiling is reached, the answer is no, and it is no before anything moves.

what are the numbers on my plan?

| plan | just do it | ask me above | never above | |---|---|---|---| | starter | under $1 a purchase, up to $5 a day | $1 | $10 a purchase, $25 a day | | pro | under $5 a purchase, up to $25 a day | $5 | $50 a purchase, $200 a day | | power | under $20 a purchase, up to $100 a day | $20 | $200 a purchase, $1,000 a day |

you can lower any of these, and lowering is immediate. you cannot raise the hard limits above your plan's.

which things can it spend on?

each plan comes with a list of categories it may spend in; anything outside the list is refused. some categories always ask, whatever the amount. travel is one: every hotel booking waits for your yes, up to a per-booking and per-day ceiling of its own, described on travel.

how do i approve something?

it asks in the channel you use. say yes and it proceeds; say no and it stops and tells you why it wanted to. the dashboard's permissions room lists everything waiting on you, everything it has actually spent, and every rule change you have made, in one place.

how do i turn it off?

one control on the permissions room switches spending off, for every category, at once. it takes effect immediately, and your agent tells you it has been switched off the next time it would have spent. we hold an emergency switch too, for the whole platform, and it has never been needed.

can it trade on its own?

no. for every trading venue, your agent proposes each trade and you approve it with a tap; nothing is placed without your yes. that is the rule for every venue today. our counsel has cleared an autonomous mode you will be able to switch on; what remains is machinery, venue by venue: your venue's signing running on our servers, the switch itself in the permissions room with the venue's terms in front of you, and terms of service that spell out the risk before you subscribe. it opens through the permissions room, never through a chat message, and this page changes as each venue's switch arrives. two versions of the sentence exist, and your agent carries the one that is true for it:

• a venue whose key is on our secured signer: your agent proposes each trade and you approve it with a tap; nothing is placed without your yes, and because your signing key is on our secured side, your approved trades also stay within the limit you set, enforced off your machine. this is the end state, and today it is true for no live venue.
• a venue whose key is still on the machine: your agent proposes each trade and you approve it with a tap; nothing is placed without your yes. the safety rail that would hold a limit off your machine is not built for this venue yet, so keep the account funded to only what you would trust it with. today this is every venue.

what is outside these limits today?

be exact here, because it is the part that matters. the design, whole, is one sentence: every limit here is held on our servers, not your agent's word, at every rung, and one tap turns it all off, everywhere, at once. that sentence becomes true the day every venue's key is off every machine; until then, this section says which parts of it are not yet true. the limits govern every payment that passes through InstaClaw's spend gate. two things sit outside them today:

trades made with keys on the machine. for your trading venues, we have not yet moved every customer's signing key off their agent's machine, so today the balance you keep in each account is the limit that actually binds; we are moving each venue onto our secured signer, one at a time. until yours is moved, trades on a prediction market, on Solana, through the wallet service's own key, or through any venue key that lives on the machine do not pass through the spend gate above. the day every venue is moved, this section is deleted.

the strength of "on our servers". on a machine where the signing key is off the box, the limit is held on our side and the agent cannot go around it. on a machine where the key is on the box, the limit is stored on our side and the agent spends against it, which is a weaker sentence, and it is the sentence that is true for most agents today. the stronger one is being made true for everyone by moving keys off the box, and the dashboard will say which sentence applies to yours.

what is switched on today?

the limits, the approvals and the off switch exist. the rail that carries payments through them is armed for a small number of agents while the last pieces are finished and is being switched on across the fleet; until it reaches yours, your agent does not pay for things on your behalf, and this page changes the day it does.

what this page does not promise

that your agent cannot make mistakes about what to buy. the limits bound how much a mistake can cost, not whether it can happen, which is why the ask-me line exists and why you should set it where a wrong purchase would annoy rather than hurt.

what next

• your agent's wallet: the wallet these limits apply to
• travel: the category that always asks
• when something breaks: what to do if an approval never arrives
• your agent's team: the gate every hire runs through
• your brokerage account: the propose-and-approve rule at a broker
• prediction markets: the two venues and where the keys live