AI agent budget policy examples

A budget policy turns a general instruction like “be careful with money” into machine-checkable rules.

The practical model

• Research agent: low per-transaction cap, broader vendor list, human approval for new vendors.
• Growth agent: higher tool budget but explicit categories and approval for subscriptions.
• Procurement agent: vendor allowlist, larger transaction cap, human approval above a materiality threshold.
• Internal ops agent: low monthly budget and strict category allowlist.
• Production agent: separate sandbox and live policies; never reuse secrets across environments.

How Alem approaches it

Alem supports monthly budgets, per-transaction limits, category/vendor constraints, approval thresholds, new-vendor approval and subscription approval.

What is live today

Alem's self-serve sandbox includes company workspaces, agent registry, budgets, spend policies, human approvals, economic ledger, ROI, HTTP/OpenAPI and MCP. Live payment execution remains private beta / integration-stage.