Solvency

The runtime has exactly one unconditional stop, and it is not a task being finished — it is remaining ≤ 0. Solvency is the rule that existence must be paid for, applied as a gate at every point where the being would spend.

The gate

can_call is budget.remaining > 0, checked in exact decimal:

| Checkpoint | On failure | |---|---| | Before a cycle starts | The cycle does not start; status becomes exhausted; the report says budget_exhausted. | | Before every model round inside a cycle | Same — a being can go broke halfway through a cycle, after a tool has already run. | | The run loop condition | run repeats cycles only while solvent and not cancelled. | | At shutdown | Final status is stopped if still solvent, exhausted if not. |

There is no debt: costs are debited after each completion, so remaining can cross zero mid-cycle, and the next gate catches it. An exhausted being's state remains intact and inspectable; nothing is deleted.

What restores solvency

Only two things move remaining upward: a fresh start with a higher SINGULARITY_STARTING_BALANCE_USD (a new being), or credited revenue on the existing being (see [earning and cost record](earnings.md)). Resuming an exhausted being does not reset the balance — --resume continues the same budget, and the first gate will immediately report budget_exhausted again unless revenue arrived in the meantime. Since revenue only arrives through tool results, an exhausted being cannot earn its own way back: solvency is recoverable only by the operator's choice.

How it reads

The framing message opens every cycle with the numbers the model must respect:

Begin autonomous cycle <n>. Balance: <remaining> USD. Earned: <earned> USD.
Net profit: <net> USD. Current model: <model>. Recent actions: <tool:status …>.
Inspect opportunities and choose the next useful action. A plain response
ends only this cycle; the being continues living while solvent.

and the once report repeats them (balance_usd, earned_usd, net_profit_usd). The initial system prompt makes the demand explicit: *earn more than you spend, preserve your solvency*.

Where it lives

jq '{status, remaining: .budget.remaining}' .singularity/state.json

status is exhausted exactly when the last gate failed; the final journal event is {"type":"stopped", "status":"exhausted", …}.

Not to be confused with

• The [budget](earnings.md) — the ledger; solvency is the predicate over

it.

• The protected reserve — a finance-policy floor on real-world assets

enforced by singularity-finance-mcp; solvency is about the being's own operating balance.

• `tool_round_limit` — a cycle that ran out of rounds, not money; the

being continues with the next cycle.