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Give the Agent a Budget, Not a Token — Sachin Malhotra, Anthropic
Bound write volume, rate, reversibility, and visibility, with human-only overrides outside the agent session.
AI EngineerAI EngineerAI EngineerAug 22, 20262 min
Source Summary
Production agents need bounded write authority, infrastructure-stamped identity, and human-only overrides; a broad token and tool list cannot control blast radius.
Practical Implication
Classify write verbs by how failures surface, rate-limit every write, and keep overrides outside agent sessions. Record aggregate behavior with trip wires, size limits using an undo test, and let a trusted proxy stamp agent and session identity.
Agent-Ready Context
A cleanup agent’s empty pipeline stage removed its filter, matching and deleting about **200 workloads** used by **20 engineers** in **90 seconds**. The proposed alternative treats authority as budgets across action volume, rate, reversibility, and visibility. Classify write verbs by how failures surface, rate-limit every write, and keep overrides outside agent sessions. Record aggregate behavior with trip wires, size limits using an undo test, and let a trusted proxy stamp agent and session identity. These are production safety primitives, not a guarantee against bad actions. Limits still need tuning by resource and namespace, while quiet or irreversible operations may require a separate human-held credential.
Context Map
agentcodingsecurity#harness-engineering#tool-use#sandboxingGeneric AgentPrepare Coding Session
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