Kernel Approval Required Before Agents Spend Money
NousResearch · x · 2026-07-16
NousResearch announced the first place winner of the hackathon: Custodian.
The core of this solution isn't about making agents more capable, but keeping them controlled even when they have the ability to spend money:
- The agent proposes an action first
- An external kernel decides to approve or reject it
- Ops can use a one-click kill switch to halt the system
- Every decision logs an encrypted credential
During a live demo, the system detected an agent attempting to modify its own policy file to gain payment permissions and escalated the situation to a human. The project runs on real Stripe payments and Nemotron inference, with a prize of $10,000 cash, an NVIDIA DGX Spark, and $5,000 in Stripe credits.
Related event: Business Agent Hackathon Names Winners(8 posts)→
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