Security and control
The AI cannot act. It can only ask.
Every brokerage with an AI feature will tell you it is safe. The question worth asking is what, structurally, prevents it — because a promise in a prompt is a request, and a condition in code is a guarantee.
Research and action are separated before a model sees them
A request that would change a position is classified by rules, not by a model, and routed away from the path that can act. A model cannot talk its way past a gate it never reaches.
Nothing runs without an explicit grant
No permission is a refusal, never a default. You name the account, the instruments, the maximum size and the daily loss limit. An instrument you did not name cannot be traded.
The checks are arithmetic, in a fixed order
The kill switch is tested first, before any limit is compared. Each check after it is narrower than the last, and every refusal names the rule that refused.
Checked again when it would actually happen
A grant can be revoked between a proposal being shown and you approving it. The check that counts is the one taken at the moment money would move, not the one taken when the proposal was drafted.
A proposal with no evidence is never executed
However permitted the action, however confident the wording. If nothing was found, nothing can be acted on.
Approved and executed are separate events
Both are recorded, and so is a refusal. The audit trail is append-only: a correction is a new entry, because a log that can be edited is not a log.
Things it cannot do
Not “will not”. These are refused by code that runs before any model is consulted, and a model has no route to the code that refuses it.
- Place, change or close anything without your approval
- Grant itself a permission, or widen one you set
- Raise a limit to stop an alert firing
- Retry an order after a timeout before reconciling
- State a figure that has no evidence behind it
One switch stops everything. Execution can be paused across every account at once, and the pause sits above the controls it stops rather than below them.