{
  "schema": "longtermcapabilities-agent-budget-control/v1",
  "version": "1.64.0",
  "releaseId": "lts-1.64.0-upgrade-safe-rewrites-and-privacy-erasure-integrity",
  "generated": "2026-08-03T20:40:00Z",
  "reviewDate": "2026-08-01",
  "path": "/insights/ai-agent-cost-and-budget-controls/",
  "controls": [
    {
      "field": "task_budget",
      "purpose": "Maximum total spend, elapsed time, model calls, and tool calls for one task.",
      "evidence": "Enforced hard limit and terminal reason when exceeded."
    },
    {
      "field": "step_budget",
      "purpose": "Per-step limits that prevent one operation from consuming the entire task envelope.",
      "evidence": "Step counters, timeout, payload, and cost limit tests."
    },
    {
      "field": "delegation_budget",
      "purpose": "Maximum depth, fan-out, peer count, and delegated authority.",
      "evidence": "Non-amplifying delegation checks and blocked fan-out cases."
    },
    {
      "field": "communication_budget",
      "purpose": "Bounds messages, tokens, rounds, shared-state writes, and coordination overhead.",
      "evidence": "Communication totals and termination on non-progressing exchanges."
    },
    {
      "field": "retrieval_budget",
      "purpose": "Bounds sources, bytes, queries, and freshness checks.",
      "evidence": "Coverage and quality remain acceptable within the limit."
    },
    {
      "field": "tool_budget",
      "purpose": "Bounds calls by tool, effect class, tenant, value, and environment.",
      "evidence": "Denied over-limit action and reconciled unknown result."
    },
    {
      "field": "retry_budget",
      "purpose": "Prevents unbounded retries and retry storms across nested agents.",
      "evidence": "Reason-aware retry count, backoff, idempotency, and stop case."
    },
    {
      "field": "human_review_budget",
      "purpose": "Makes reviewer capacity, queue delay, and escalation cost visible.",
      "evidence": "Assignment delay, review time, expiry, and overload behavior."
    },
    {
      "field": "context_budget",
      "purpose": "Limits prompt, memory, retrieval, and artifact context to reduce cost and data exposure.",
      "evidence": "Context selection record and quality regression test."
    },
    {
      "field": "provider_budget",
      "purpose": "Limits concentration and spend by model, tool, or infrastructure provider.",
      "evidence": "Provider allocation, fallback behavior, and concentration threshold."
    },
    {
      "field": "outcome_cost",
      "purpose": "Measures cost per verified outcome rather than cost per model response.",
      "evidence": "Task, effect, human review, recovery, and failed-attempt cost included."
    },
    {
      "field": "change_trigger",
      "purpose": "Reopens evaluation when price, model, tool, topology, or workload changes the budget envelope.",
      "evidence": "Versioned baseline, threshold, owner, and review date."
    }
  ],
  "primaryMeasure": "cost per verified outcome",
  "boundary": "Planning and operating schema; no universal ROI, expected-revenue, or cost-saving claim is made."
}