Approval-gate checklist · 2026-10-11
Before an agent spends money: a 7-point approval checklist
What to check before you let any agent buy, subscribe, upgrade or top up on your behalf.
Agents spend money in quiet ways. A plan upgrade to get past a rate limit. A new API key on a paid tier. A "free trial" that converts. None of it looks like spending when it happens. All of it shows up on the card later.
Run this checklist before you approve any action that costs money, including ones that only might.
The checklist
- What exactly is being bought? Product, plan, quantity. Not "the tool we need." The line item.
- One-time or recurring? If recurring, what is the monthly cost and when is the next charge? Put the cancel date in your calendar now.
- Is there a cap? Usage-based billing needs a hard limit set on the provider's side, not just a promise in the agent's instructions.
- Which card or account? Agents should never hold a card number. They should ask, and you pay.
- Does something we already pay for do this? Most solo stacks have three tools that overlap. Check before adding a fourth.
- What breaks if we say no? If the honest answer is "nothing today," the answer is no today.
- Who logged it? Every approved spend gets one line in a cost log: date, item, amount, recurring yes/no, reason.
Rules that sit around the checklist
- No spend without a named amount. "It's cheap" is not an amount.
- Trials count as spending. Treat a trial as the full price on the conversion date.
- Retries are not new requests. If a payment fails, the agent stops and tells you. It does not try another card or a different plan.
- Daily ceiling. Pick a number, even a small one, that triggers an automatic stop for the day. Agents should check it before every paid call, not after.
A one-line test
If you'd be annoyed to see this charge on next month's statement without remembering it, it needs an approval today.
A weekly five-minute review of the cost log catches most of the drift. A Cost Auditor agent can prepare that review for you, read-only, so the numbers are ready when you sit down.
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