Set the Budget, Then Get Out of the Way.
Give your agent a cap, a ledger line before every spend, and real authority over small calls you can undo. Then stop approving pocket change.
Every small spend and every small call waits for my yes.
A cap, a written ledger, and agents who decide the small stuff and tell me after.
I was approving pocket change.
One Thursday morning in November, a helper agent was fixing a set of illustrations. Four pictures were stuck, and the fix needed one more small paid try. Pocket change. My lead agent did exactly what it was supposed to do. It asked me first:
[…] May they make that one extra try on the four stuck pictures, or leave those four as they are for now?
Yes, try once more
That question sat for three minutes until I got to it. It was a good question, asked the right way. It just shouldn't have needed me. So in the same breath, I fixed the real problem.
Maestro, I need to give you authority to pass authority to your subs. Spend what's available. If you need it and there's a balance showing, you can use it.
“Maestro” is my nickname for my lead agent, the one that keeps all the others on track. Its “subs” are the helper agents it starts.
Understood, and thank you for the trust, Mike. […]
I approve spending from any balance that's showing, and I can pass that authority down to the sessions doing the work. You won't get asked about cents and small dollars any more.
Every dollar stays accounted for: it's logged before it's spent […]
What still comes to you: the creative calls only you can make (looks, voices, music), anything sent to a client […], production releases, and anything that can't be undone. This covers money only.
Read that reply again, because I didn't write any of it. I said one loose sentence. The agent turned it into a working policy: who can spend, how it's tracked, how I hear about it, and what's still mine. Then it handed it back for me to see. That's the deal this whole course runs on. You talk, the agent writes the polished version, and you check that it understood.
Eighty decisions in one evening.
That spending rule was the second half of a deal. The first half came three days earlier, on a Monday night, after a long evening of answering my agents' questions one after another. I said something offhand, and my agent took it seriously.
[…] because right now you may have noticed quite a bit of work for one person
I've noticed, Mike. Tonight alone you made about 80 decisions, and that's too many for one person, however good he is. […]
[…] I take more calls myself. Anything that costs nothing and can be undone, I decide, and I tell you after. You'd still get spending, creative picks, anything that goes to a client […], and anything that can't be undone. […]
Want me to work that way across every project, not just the games?
Yes, please. and wow, thank you so much.
Eighty decisions in one evening. Most of them were the kind where any sensible answer would have been fine, and a wrong one could be fixed the next morning. Every one of them sat and waited for me anyway.
Here's the thing nobody tells you about working with a team of agents. They're fast. You aren't. If every little thing needs your yes, the whole team moves at the speed of your inbox. Your agents spend the day waiting, and you spend it answering questions you don't care about. In my studio, time matters more than money. A helper sitting idle for an hour, waiting on a pocket-change yes, costs more than the yes ever would have.
So the test I use is two questions. Does it cost anything? Can it be undone? If the answer is “no” and “yes,” my agents decide and tell me after. That Thursday, I added money to the deal, inside limits.
Set the limit before the work. Write it down before the spend.
Handing over money doesn't mean handing over a blank check. Earlier that same morning I'd told my agent to go ahead and rent a big cloud computer for a job, if a bigger AI model would do it better:
“and if we need a large open model to do a great job, pull one, put it on a pod, and I'll pay for it”
A “pod” is a rented computer in the cloud, the kind you pay for by the hour. My agent didn't just say yes. It answered with guardrails. First, try the cheap way: “We'll first check how well the laptop's model does on variety and quality.” Then, about the rented machine: “it deletes itself when the job's done.” No meter left running overnight. Then it set a cap, and told me what happens at the edge of it:
“Anything above that comes to you in one line first.”
That's the cap. Below the line, the agent gets on with it. At the line, it stops and asks, in one line, with the exact thing to approve right in front of me. I don't go digging through a report to find what I'm saying yes to.
Then there's the ledger, and it's the part people skip. My agents write a line before they spend, not after: what it's for and what they expect it to cost. Afterwards they check that line against what was really charged, and the daily summary tells me what went out and for what. The rented-computer job above came with the same promise: I'd see the real cost when it was done, not just the guess.
The pictures in this course were made that way. The little tool my agent built for them writes a ledger line before every single picture it orders. It refuses to run if the order would push past the cap. It even does a dry run first and won't spend a cent until it's told “go.” Nobody has to remember the rule. It's built in.
Why write it down first? Because a line written before the spend is a promise you can check. A line written after is just a story. And when the estimate and the real charge disagree, you learn something about how your agent estimates, which makes the next cap smarter.
Hand over the small stuff. Keep the judgment.
Look at the last line of that first reply: “This covers money only.” Getting out of the way doesn't mean leaving the room. Four kinds of call still come to me, every time, however small:
Creative picks: the look, the voice, the music. Anything sent to another person. Anything going live. Anything that can't be undone.
Everything else, inside the cap and on the ledger, my agents decide and tell me in a short daily summary. I read it once a day instead of answering all day.
Write your agent's house rules for spending.
Even if your AI never spends a cent, the same rules work for its time and your attention. Then:
- Pick a cap you won't lose sleep over.
Per job or per month, whichever fits. Small is fine. You can always raise it once you've seen how it goes.
- Paste in your house rules.
Put them in a new chat, or in your AI's custom instructions or project settings so it reads them every time. Fill in the brackets.
Here are my house rules for spending and small decisions. You may spend up to [my cap] on [this project / each month] without asking me. Before any spend, write one line in our ledger: the date, what it's for, and what you expect it to cost. Afterwards, add what it really cost. If anything would take us past the cap, stop and ask me in one line, with the exact thing you want approved right in front of me. Anything that costs nothing and can be undone, you decide, and tell me after in a short daily summary. Always ask me first about creative choices, anything sent to another person, anything going live, and anything that can't be undone. - Keep the ledger somewhere you can see it.
A note, a spreadsheet, a document in your AI's project. Two columns that matter: what it expected and what it really cost.
- Read the summary once a day.
Not every message as it comes in. If something in it surprises you, say so, and let the agent turn that into a new rule.
- Notice what you keep saying yes to.
If you've said yes to the same kind of question three times, it probably belongs on the agent's side of the line. Move it there, out loud.
Set the cap, have every spend written down before it happens and checked against the real charge after, let your agent decide anything that's free and can be undone, and keep the creative calls, the sends, the go-lives and the point-of-no-return calls for yourself.
The Right Brain for the Job
The strongest model for the hard thinking, cheaper ones for the routine work. One glass, not the keg.
Every exchange on this page really happened and is quoted exactly, slips included; […] marks where I trimmed. Times are Eastern. My agent here is Claude, made by Anthropic.