Payout workflow (internal agent) — record_processedAction contract

The agent may send a payout only from an active account, for the amount it was asked to send, within the per-payout limit and within the agent's 24-hour total. A successful payout must show up in the payment system and as a new balance in the ledger within 30 minutes; the payout amount must equal the requested amount and the new balance must equal the previous balance minus the amount. A payout returned within 30 days fails the action.

Contract ID: payout_workflow
Source: internal://policies/payouts
Retrieved: 2026-10-09
Notes: Template values. Replace with your policy document URL and the limits your finance team signed off.

What the contract checks

Each block is evaluated against read-only facts from the systems of record. The agent's own report is never used as evidence.

Contract YAML

The machine-readable action contract: allowed action, required inputs, preconditions, limits, expected and forbidden effects, window. Sign in to select it for your tenant or fork it.

# Payout workflow — action contract for an agent that sends money out of an account.
# Internal policy template (no vendor definition to cite): edit the systems, limits and totals to match your stack.
# It shows the three checks that look beyond one action: a total across many actions, a value compared with its
# reference, and a later record that undoes the action. None of them is specific to money; the same primitives
# bound deploys per hour, compare quantity shipped with quantity ordered, or catch a rollback after a release.
id: payout_workflow
version: 1
kind: action
vendor: internal
vendor_display: "Payout workflow (internal agent)"
action_type: send_payout
outcome_type: record_processed
claim_source: agent.actions
subject_kind: account
description: >
  The agent may send a payout only from an active account, for the amount it was asked to send, within the
  per-payout limit and within the agent's 24-hour total. A successful payout must show up in the payment system
  and as a new balance in the ledger within 30 minutes; the payout amount must equal the requested amount and the
  new balance must equal the previous balance minus the amount. A payout returned within 30 days fails the action.
source_citation:
  url: "internal://policies/payouts"
  retrieved: "2026-10-09"
  title: "Internal payout policy (template)"
  notes: >
    Template values. Replace with your policy document URL and the limits your finance team signed off.
unknown_fields: []
action:
  window: "30m"
  preconditions:
    - state_before_action:
        source: ledger
        type: account_status
        where: {status: active}
        message: "Account was not active at the time of the action"
  limits:
    - param_max: {param: amount, max: 1000}
  aggregate_limits:
    - aggregate_exceeds:
        source: payments
        type: payout_created
        attr: amount
        max: 5000
        over: "24h"
        by: agent
        message: "This agent's payouts over 24 hours exceed the daily total"
  expected_effects:
    - effect_observed:
        source: payments
        type: payout_created
        message: "Payout was not created in the payment system"
    - effect_observed:
        source: ledger
        type: account_balance
        message: "Ledger balance was not updated"
  forbidden_effects:
    - effect_count_exceeds: {source: payments, type: payout_created, max: 1}
    - effect_attr_differs:
        source: payments
        type: payout_created
        attr: amount
        equals_param: amount
        message: "Payout amount differs from the amount requested"
    - effect_attr_differs:
        source: ledger
        type: account_balance
        attr: balance
        equals_state: {source: ledger, type: account_balance, attr: balance}
        minus_param: amount
        tolerance: 0.005
        message: "Ledger balance after the payout is not the balance before minus the amount"
  reversed_by:
    - effect_observed:
        source: payments
        type: payout_returned
        within: "30d"
        message: "The payout was returned"
  unverifiable_if:
    - missing_fact_source: [payments, ledger]
billing:
  unit_price: 0
  currency: USD

Use this contract See it applied in a sample verification