Example policy.json · 2026-10-11
Example policy.json: a read-only Cost Auditor
A sample permissions file for an agent that watches spending but can never change anything.
A Cost Auditor is the easiest agent to trust, because it should never do anything. It reads bills, usage dashboards and your cost log, and it tells you what changed. That's it.
Here is a simple example of how to write that down as a policy file. It's illustrative, not a standard. Adapt the field names to whatever your runtime reads.
{
"agent": "cost-auditor",
"purpose": "Weekly report of recurring costs, changes and anomalies.",
"mode": "read_only",
"can_read": [
"billing_emails",
"costs/cost-log.md",
"provider_usage_exports"
],
"can_write": [
"reports/cost/"
],
"never": [
"purchase", "upgrade_plan", "cancel_subscription",
"send_email", "change_payment_method", "contact_vendor"
],
"ask_first": [
"read_any_new_source_not_listed_above"
],
"stop_when": [
"a charge is more than 25% above last month for the same item",
"a new recurring charge appears that is not in the cost log",
"any source cannot be read"
],
"on_stop": "write a short flag at the top of the report and do nothing else",
"schedule": "weekly, Monday 07:00 local"
}What to notice
mode: read_only plus can_write to one folder. It can produce a report. It cannot touch anything that costs or saves money.
The never list includes cancelling. Cancelling feels safe. It isn't. An agent that cancels the wrong subscription takes a product offline.
stop_when is about surprises, not size. A big charge you expected is fine. A small one you didn't is the signal.
on_stop is boring on purpose. When it finds something, it flags it and waits. You decide.
The report it should produce
Keep it short. Total this week vs last week. New charges. Changed charges. Trials converting in the next 14 days. One line each. If the report takes more than two minutes to read, the agent is doing too much.
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