What guardrails are
Guardrails are the enforced limits between your CEO’s autonomy and your money: caps, the conviction floor, whitelisted addresses, sign-offs. Written in plain text by you, checked in code on every action.
Guardrails are the hard limits your CEO trades inside, caps on size, a conviction floor on quality, and a custody wall that lets it trade your money but never move it off your whitelist. They’re rules you can read, not promises.
“An AI trades my money” is either terrifying or reasonable, and the difference is entirely in the guardrails. Not promises of good behavior, structures that make bad behavior impossible. Here is each wall, what it stops, and why the whole thing is written where you can read it.
01Caps: how much, where, how fast
Caps are the arithmetic walls: the most a single bet may take, the most a theme may absorb, the most a period may spend, whether leverage exists at all and at what ceiling. Your CEO optimizes freely inside them; at the wall, the bet shrinks or dies. Set them tight and sleep like a Chair; loosen them as trust accrues. The dials are yours: can I set risk limits?
02The conviction floor: a quality wall
Money is rationed by strength of case, not appetite: no bet is placed below the conviction score you demand, a number chosen with your CEO at the launch interview, and yours to raise or lower any time after. It is the wall that keeps “interesting” from becoming “funded.” The full logic lives in the conviction floor, explained.
03The custody wall: trade, never take
The hardest wall is about where money can go. Your fund lives in a non-custodial wallet only you control, and withdrawals can only ever travel to addresses you whitelisted in advance. The CEO can deploy capital into markets and bring it back; it has no path to send your money anywhere you didn’t pre-approve. In one line: it trades your money. It can never take it, by your rules, to wallets you whitelisted. The mechanics are in non-custodial wallets, explained.
04Sign-offs, and rules you can read
Above the thresholds you define, autonomy pauses: the big ones wait for your sign-off, with the full case attached. And every wall above is written in plain text you can read, edit, and tighten mid-flight, then enforced as checks in code on every action. Not a model’s promise to behave; a gate that doesn’t open. Two things never bend: every bet clears the gates against your caps before it moves, and the big ones wait for your sign-off.
Non-custodial cuts both ways: nobody can take your funds, and nobody can recover your keys for you. Back up your keys and password somewhere safe; losing them can mean losing access to your money for good.
What to remember
- Caps bound how much, where, and how fast the fund can bet.
- The conviction floor blocks any trade below your quality bar.
- The custody wall, verbatim: it trades your money. It can never take it, by your rules, to wallets you whitelisted.
- Guardrails are rules you can read, enforced in code, not trust.