Inspiration
Savings circles are one of the world's oldest financial tools. In West Africa they're called susu, in Latin America tanda, in India chit funds, and in Kenya and South Africa chama and stokvel. Everyone contributes monthly and one member takes the pot. They run on trust and group chats, and the weak point is always the same: someone becomes the awkward, unpaid debt collector. Late payments break circles, spreadsheets cause disputes, and families spread across countries add even more friction. We wanted an AI treasurer that does the chasing without ever being allowed to touch the money on its own judgment
What it does
One-sentence setup. An organizer types something like "eight people, $100 monthly, starting Dec 1, Chidi goes first for rent." ROSCOPAL turns that into a policy card (members, pot size, grace period, turn order) for the organizer to confirm. PayPal contributions. Members get one-click PayPal checkout requests each cycle. Exceptions handled by the rules. When a member says she can only pay on the 5th, the agent checks the circle's extension and grace policy, grants a hold, and informs the group without shaming anyone. Deterministic Safety Gate. Eight programmatic checks (circle active, cycle open, recipient valid, contributions confirmed, amount exact, no duplicate payout, policy satisfied, approvals satisfied) must all pass before money moves. The AI explains but cannot authorize payouts. Payout. The organizer releases the pot through the PayPal Payouts API, with a receipt. Transparent ledger. An AG Grid ledger lets members sort, filter and export history to CSV. Entries are hash-chained with SHA-256, and a verify button recomputes the whole chain so any edit would be detected.
How we built it
ROSCOPAL separates what the AI is good at from what must be deterministic. A language model parses setup requests, classifies member messages (extensions, swaps, questions) and drafts replies. A rules engine owns every decision that affects money. Contributions and payouts run through PayPal's sandbox APIs Orders, Checkout, Payouts, Webhooks. The audit ledger uses AG Grid on top of a SHA-256 hash chain. The app is deployed on Cloudflare Workers and we tested it with an automated suite of 40 scripted scenarios.
Challenges we ran into
Keeping the AI useful without giving it authority. The hard design problem was letting the agent handle messy human messages while ensuring only deterministic checks can release funds.
Faced alot of issues with sandbox because of my region
Building trust, not just features. A shared money tool has to be understandable to every member, so we made every decision show its reason. Testing honestly. Our suite is synthetic, so we focused on proving no payout can happen outside the rules.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
All 40 scripted scenarios pass, with zero out-of-policy payouts. A Safety Gate whose eight checks the AI cannot bypass. A hash-chained ledger anyone in the circle can verify. A product rooted in a tradition that millions of people actually use.
What we learned
In money software, the AI should propose and explain while code decides. Clear explanations ("this was held because...") build more group trust than clever automation. And a tool for communities has to be designed around social comfort as much as correctness.
What's next for ROSCOPAL
Moving custody to a licensed payments partner or a direct-to-recipient model, since this demo runs in the PayPal sandbox. Turn-swap negotiation and shortfall voting inside the group. Support for more currencies and cross-border corridors. Voice notes and WhatsApp-style chat so members can use it in their own language. Opt-in reliability history for members.
Built With
- aggrid
- paypal
- typescript
