Use the budget ledger to make model and execution spend explicit before work is committed. A budget is an authority boundary; an allocation is the durable record of value reserved for one scope of work.
Budget model and ownership
Identify the tenant or organization, governing budget, time or project scope, currency/unit, and actor allowed to allocate it. Provider configuration does not own budget authority.
Allocation lifecycle
Allocations move through requested, reserved, committed, released, reconciled, or failed states. Each transition records its cause and source identity.
Reserve, commit, release, and reconcile
Reserve before starting governed spend, commit measured usage, release unused value, and reconcile provider results without rewriting prior ledger entries.
Concurrency and idempotency
Use stable operation identities and atomic repository transitions. Duplicate delivery must return the recorded result rather than allocate twice.
Provider and model implications
Model authority checks qualification, policy, lease, and available budget independently. A ready model can still be denied by budget policy.
Evidence and ledger inspection
Inspect budget identity, allocation identity, actor, run/turn, provider/model, reserved and committed amounts, state, timestamps, and correlation.
Alerts and exhaustion behavior
Reject work before spend when no allocation can be reserved. Surface the owning budget and safe operator choices without silently selecting a cheaper or weaker model.
Failure recovery
Reconcile uncertain provider usage before releasing or retrying an allocation. Never erase a ledger record to make capacity reappear.
Verification checklist
Prove one reservation/commit, one partial release, one duplicate request, one concurrent exhaustion, one denial, and one reconciliation after an uncertain result.