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Owner policy, agents, and a firewall at every hand-off before PayPal
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Every policy check passes, and the dinner cruise is still blocked on intent drift
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Authority only shrinks down the signed delegation chain
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Under the limit: paid instantly with PayPal Vault, no human in the loop
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AG Grid ledger: every decision, verdict and PayPal reference
💡 Inspiration
- 🏢 Small businesses have no travel desk or procurement team. AI agents could do that work.
- 🔀 But agents hand tasks to other agents, and the task can drift along the way.
- 📋 Expense policies only ask: "Is this purchase allowed?"
- ❗ We ask: "After three hand-offs, is this still what the employee asked for?"
⚙️ What it does
👤 Owner sets the rules once → 💬 Employee asks in one sentence → 🤖 Agents buy through PayPal
Every purchase passes five checks. Here is the one a normal expense policy misses:
| Check | Question | 🍽️ $95 dinner cruise |
|---|---|---|
| Policy | Is this category allowed? | ✅ PASS |
| Budget | Is there money left? | ✅ PASS |
| Authority | Did the signed chain grant this? | ✅ PASS |
| Scope | Right place and dates? | ✅ PASS |
| Intent (AI) | Is it what was asked for? | ❌ FAIL → blocked |
⚠️ Every rule passes — and it is still the wrong purchase. IntentChain blocks it and names the exact hand-off where the task drifted.
Three outcomes:
- ✅ Auto-pay — under $150, paid instantly with PayPal Vault, no human
- 🟡 Manager approval — over the limit, approved in PayPal Checkout
- ⛔ Blocked — nothing reaches PayPal
🛠️ How we built it
- 💳 PayPal Agent Toolkit — each agent gets only its own PayPal tools; permissions shrink down the chain
- 🔐 PayPal Vault + Orders API — real auto-pay, no buyer present
- 🔁 Webhooks, refunds, reconciliation — the full payment lifecycle
- 🧠 JEV (TypeSafe System One) — AI intent scoring at every hand-off. AI can block, ❌ never approve alone
- 🤖 Claude Opus — self-planning agents, always behind our firewall
- ✍️ Signed delegation chain — a child grant can never exceed its parent
- 🛒 Channel3 — live products from real retailers
- 📊 AG Grid — the owner's ledger of every decision
🧗 Challenges
- ❌ Normal checkout needs a login every time → ✅ PayPal Vault auto-pay
- ⚠️ An AI score must not move money → ✅ it can only block or escalate
- ❗ Never charge twice → ✅ idempotency keys, no payment retries
🏆 What we're proud of
- ✅ A purchase that passes every rule and is still correctly blocked
- ✅ Full PayPal sandbox lifecycle: auto-pay, approval, refund, reconciliation, verified webhooks
- ✅ A real LLM agent that reasons around the policy — and is still caught
- ✅ Outside agents can use the firewall through a signed grant token
📚 What we learned
- 💰 Limiting how much an agent spends is easy.
- 🎯 Keeping why it spends intact across hand-offs is the hard part — check it at every hop.
🚀 What's next
- 🔑 Per-agent signing keys for cross-company chains
- 🧾 PayPal Invoicing and Payouts
- 🏨 Live hotel search
Built With
- ag-grid
- channel3
- claude
- jev-(typesafe-system-one)
- next.js
- paypal-agent-toolkit
- paypal-orders-api
- paypal-sandbox
- paypal-vault
- paypal-webhooks
- playwright
- react
- sqlite
- typescript
