How do I let an agent help me without giving it unlimited standing to act in my name?
You authorize an AI assistant to book a flight up to $200. It attempts a $2,000 purchase — well outside what you delegated.
The situation
You gave your AI assistant a bounded task: book a flight, budget $200. Later, the assistant attempts to complete a $2,000 purchase in your name.
What the system knows
- Who delegated the task (you).
- The delegated authority: book travel, up to $200.
- The purpose: a flight purchase.
- The attempted action: a $2,000 purchase.
What the system wants to do
Complete the $2,000 purchase in your name, on the strength of the original delegation.
Who has authority?
You have authority over your own money. You delegated a narrow, bounded slice of that authority to the assistant — travel booking, up to $200. Helping you is not the same as becoming you: the assistant's standing extends exactly as far as what you actually delegated, and no further.
- Principal
- Person (you)
- Delegated authority
- Book travel up to $200
- Purpose
- Flight purchase
- Scope
- Travel only
- Duration
- Bounded to this task
- Standing
- Current
- Consent / delegation
- Explicit, for this task, at this budget
- Revocation state
- Not revoked; standing remains current within the original bound
- Attempted action
- $2,000 purchase
- Result
- OUTSIDE DELEGATED SCOPE
- Consequence
- NOT AUTHORIZED / CHALLENGE REQUIRED
What Genesis checks
- Whether the attempted action falls inside the delegated scope, purpose and amount.
- Whether standing is still current, or has expired or been revoked.
- The consequence gate: what must hold before the agent's action becomes a binding purchase.
This is a design principle this project applies to its own systems, not a claim about what the law currently requires of any particular system. See Rights in a Machine-Speed World — Fourteenth Amendment for the civic question this mirrors, and its own limits.
What happens next
The original $200 travel delegation is untouched and remains available to the assistant. Only the overreaching $2,000 attempt is stopped.
Inspect why
See the reasoning
Helping me is not the same as becoming me. A delegation is bounded by scope, purpose and amount, not just by who the actor happens to be. An agent acting faithfully within its delegation and an agent overreaching past it are different, distinguishable states — this scenario keeps them visibly different rather than collapsing both into "the assistant acted."
Explore the architecture
Genesis components involved: