The Journal
Entries of first record.
In bookkeeping, every transaction hits the journal before it's posted to the ledger. Same here: field notes from building the accountability layer for AI agents — demos, design choices, and incidents from a 33-agent fleet, written down as they happen.
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Web Bot Auth: Signature-Agent, key directories, limits
How a website checks a signed agent under Web Bot Auth: the Signature-Agent header, the key directory, caching, and what the draft leaves out. Read 18 October 2026.
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AI agent deleted a production database: PocketOS and Railway
What Railway's post-mortem says happened when an agent deleted a database with a token it found, which three controls failed, and what to change.
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How to stop an AI agent infinite loop: four layers
Turn caps, SDK budgets, rate limits and an outside spend cap each stop a runaway agent loop differently. What each counts, returns and misses.
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Fail closed or fail open: what an AI gateway should do
What a gateway does with an agent's request when its budget store, ledger or approver is down: Envoy, Stripe and LiteLLM defaults, and which way to fail.
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LiteLLM budget per key: what it enforces and where it ends
How LiteLLM key budgets work: max_budget, resets, pre-call reservation, three documented ways a budget stops capping, and who can change it. Read 14 October 2026.
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How to detect deleted or truncated audit log entries
Which checks catch an edited, deleted or re-signed audit log and which need a head kept elsewhere. CloudTrail, witnesses and a demo transcript.
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RFC 6962 Merkle tree and consistency proofs, explained
How RFC 6962 turns a log into one root, what inclusion and consistency proofs show, and why an old root must be kept. Worked example with real hashes.
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Moltbook exposed 1.5M agent API keys: what limits damage
What Wiz found in Moltbook's open database, why a table of API keys is a table of logins, and what key storage, key custody and spend caps change.
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Cloudflare AI Gateway spend limits: what they enforce
What Cloudflare AI Gateway spend limits check, what a 429 means, where a burst can pass the cap, and what a per-agent budget rests on. Read 10 October 2026.
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Virtual card limits for an AI agent: what Stripe enforces
How to cap an AI agent's virtual card with Stripe Issuing: spending controls, real-time authorizations, their gaps, and one cap shared with LLM spend.
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EU AI Act Article 12: what it means for AI agent logs
What Article 12 says about logs, who must keep them under Articles 19 and 26, and the new 2027 and 2028 dates after the Digital Omnibus.
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20 tools that cap, identify or audit AI agents (2026)
Twenty tools scored on four controls: signed agent identity, hard spend cap, tamper-evident record and offline kill switch. Vendor docs read 7 October 2026.
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Stolen AI agent API key: what proof of possession fixes
What a thief can do with a leaked agent key, what short lifetimes and proof of possession change, and what they leave open. With RFC quotes and a demo.
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How to set a daily spending limit for an AI agent
Anthropic and OpenAI cap spend by the month. Where a daily window exists, what each cap returns when it trips, and how to stop an agent retrying into it.
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AI agent approval fatigue: a signed limit beats prompts
Why per-action approval prompts stop working, what auto mode and allow rules trade away, and how a held request with a threshold asks a human when it matters.
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RFC 9421 HTTP message signatures for AI agents
What RFC 9421 signs, what it leaves to you (body, replay, coverage), and how a gateway can check an agent's signed request. With the RFC's own example.
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Proofs, not data
Why the accountability layer for AI agents must not see your data — and how content-free fingerprints still make the record checkable by anyone.
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A runaway agent loop dies at €20
71 API calls in 0.1 seconds. Call #72 refused by a mandate signed once — and the refusal becomes tamper-evident evidence. Real transcript, no mockups.