What Mandate is

The problem

Agents can already pay. Give a model a wallet key and it will move funds. What it cannot do is prove to you that it will stay inside the rules you had in mind. Prompts are not enforcement. A key in a .env file grants everything or nothing.

The answer

The user delegates bounded authority to an AI agent through a smart account they own. The agent plans and executes; the contract enforces; a hardware wallet co-signs anything irreversible.

Concretely, a MandateAccount holds the funds and knows three addresses:

• the owner, a person with a browser wallet, who sets every limit;
• the agent, a hot wallet the model drives, which may only call execute;
• the guardian, a Ledger, whose signature is required for steps flagged irreversible.

Every call the agent makes is checked against an on-chain allow-list of (target, selector) pairs. Every step's USDC outflow is measured on-chain and checked against a per-transaction cap and a rolling 24-hour cap. Steps that bridge or pay a third party revert unless the guardian has clear-signed a plain-text approval that the contract rebuilds and verifies.

The flow it ships with

Tell the agent "I need 100 USDC on Arc by Friday to pay Acme. Don't sell my ETH." It:

1. reads your positions and remaining mandate;
2. compares live USDC borrow rates across lending protocols with one standardized query on The Graph;
3. drafts a typed plan: supply WETH and borrow real Circle USDC on Compound v3 (Base Sepolia), burn it through CCTP v2, mint on Arc, pay the recipient, schedule the repayment;
4. simulates every step it can, executes the borrow on its own, and stops at the bridge until you tap the Ledger.

The reverse leg, repayment, works the same way: bridge back, repay Compound, withdraw the freed collateral, mark the intent done.

Where the model stops

The model only produces an intent: amount, recipient, constraints, repayment horizon. Everything after that is deterministic TypeScript in the SDK. The model never writes calldata, never sees a private key, and cannot lift a limit. If it tries to exceed the mandate the contract reverts with a named error and the agent explains why.

Next

• Quickstart to try it in five minutes.
• Bounded delegation for the trust model.
• Add Mandate to your agent if you already have one.