I built the approval gate, then put a price on it

A company raised $30M last week to take the human out of agent payments. The expected take from someone with my background is a post defending the human. I agree with them, up to a thousand dollars.

Two conditions, and nothing else

The manager gate fires on two conditions: any exception, or a clean bill over $1,000. Below that, a clean three-way match posts straight through and no one signs.

From the seeded scenarios: $730 clean goes straight through. $9,360 clean still stops, because a material bill gets a human whatever the match says. A steel bar invoiced 9% over the PO stops. Invoiced 100 units, received 80, stops.

Two things exactly, and they are the load-bearing ones. Below the floor, what posts the invoice is deterministic tested code, not the model: the agent reads, investigates and proposes, it does not decide an amount. And these are seeded demo scenarios, not production traffic.

The argument I actually want

It is not whether humans should approve payments. It is that "a human approves payments" stops being a control the moment no one wrote down which payments.

An unwritten threshold is not a policy, it is a habit, and a habit cannot be audited. The number itself is arguable and probably wrong for your business. Its existence, in code, with a reason next to it, is not.

If you run AP: what is your straight-through limit, and who set it? The whole loop, an agent deriving the workflow then a real invoice routed through it, is in the ledgerloop case study.