Abstract
Autonomous business agents can spend more than money. They can spend customer patience, founder reputation, team focus, policy margin, and security surface. This paper defines authority budgets as multi-dimensional limits attached to operational missions.
Budget Dimensions
| Dimension | Control |
|---|---|
| Spend | Dollar or credit limit |
| Customer impact | Customer-visible state boundary |
| Policy | Binding rule and exception treatment |
| Tool scope | Capability grants and expiry |
| Reversibility | Auto-execute only where rollback is practical |
| Reputation | Human review for public or strategic-account risk |
Hypothesis
Teams will delegate more operational work to agents when authority budgets are explicit and machine-enforced. Missing authority budgets will correlate with inappropriate autonomy attempts and weaker operator trust.