Allowance
A limited prepaid budget assigned to an agent, session, team, or tool.
Concepts
Policy
Rules that decide whether an agent can spend — caps, allowlists, and approval thresholds.
Agent
The AI system or automation runtime that attempts to access paid resources.
Resource
An API, dataset, MCP tool, web page, or onchain service that requires payment.
Receipt
A record of a completed, blocked, or held payment attempt.
Approval
A manual confirmation required when a payment exceeds a policy threshold.
How the pieces fit
Section titled “How the pieces fit”An agent holds one allowance (or several, one per tool class or per team). Every time it tries to pay a resource, AllowKit evaluates the active policy before any money moves. If the payment passes, it settles and a receipt records it. If it’s above an approval threshold, AllowKit creates a pending approval instead of settling or blocking outright.
Read Allowances and Policy schema next for the concrete mechanics behind each concept.