What is Budget Exhaustion?
Budget exhaustion is the moment an agent's spend ceiling is reached — and the agent must stop, degrade, or ask. How you design for it decides the outcome.
What happens
The ceiling is a per-agent or per-category cap.
When reached, further spend is BLOCKED or FLAGGED.
Why it matters
Exhaustion is a feature, not a failure — it's the firewall doing its job.
Well-designed agents handle it: finish with what they have, or ask for more.
The design principle
Make exhaustion explicit and reviewable — the audit log shows exactly where and why it happened.
FAQ
Is hitting the cap a bug?
No — it's the control working. The review loop is the escape hatch.
How do I size ceilings?
From the audit log: legitimate spend + headroom.
Related
Stop the next $12,400 night.
One API call (or MCP tool) in front of every agent transaction — APPROVED, BLOCKED, or FLAGGED, deterministic, ~5 ms, fully logged.
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