session: interactive chat bypasses daily spending limit

[santoshkumarradha]

Summary

Interactive chat turns and /task delegations bypass the project-wide daily spending rail and only check the per-conversation limit.

Observed Behavior

When a session hits or exceeds the configured daily budget, interactive chat turns and tasks spawned from chat continue executing and consuming model spend without tripping the daily spending limit. Only headless codeaf do and standing firings enforce the daily rail.

Expected Behavior

Every execution path (interactive chat, task crew, standing firings, headless runs) must enforce the daily spend ceiling configured in the workspace/project rails.

Reproduction Steps

1. Set daily budget rail to $1.00 via workspace config or /budget 1.
2. Run interactive chat turns until spend exceeds $1.00.
3. Submit a subsequent turn or /task. The session continues executing and incurring costs.

Root Cause / Location

In internal/session/taskcrew.go:211, crewSpendGuard is called with enforceDaily: false:

crewSpendGuard(..., false)

Rail checks in internal/session/rail.go:58-82 only validate per-session budgets when enforceDaily is disabled.

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Drafted with CodeAF · reviewed and owned by the author

[santoshkumarradha]

New evidence from dev 837b2b0, found by the docs lanes while writing the public docs. Replication for every item below starts from a clean install:

1. Build dev 837b2b0 (git checkout 837b2b0 && make build, binary bin/codeaf), or install the dev build with curl -fsSL https://agentfield.ai/get/devaf | bash.
2. Use an isolated profile: export HOME=$(mktemp -d), export OPENROUTER_API_KEY, and keep the default model (~deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-latest, crew on auto).
3. On a busy machine set task.max_load to 0 (/settings, Tasks) so the busy-machine gate does not hold tasks.

Daily limit not enforced in the interactive chat (bugs master B01)

• Screen: with /budget 0.10 and $0.13 already spent, a chat turn ran and /task add a one-line doc comment to main.go started and finished; the top bar read $0.14 / $0.10. The /settings Spending row and the manual say new work waits.
• Control: the same profile headless, codeaf do "add a one-line doc comment to main.go", refused: today's spending limit of $0.10 is spent, so nothing was started. Standing firings also honour the limit.
• Replication: R=$(mktemp -d) && cd "$R" && git init -q && printf 'package main\n\nfunc main() {}\n' > main.go && printf 'module demo\n\ngo 1.22\n' > go.mod && git add -A && git commit -qm init; codeaf; /budget 0.10; chat until the top bar passes $0.10; send one more message, then /task add a one-line doc comment to main.go.
• Code at 837b2b0: internal/session/taskcrew.go:211 calls crewSpendGuard(..., false) (daily fold off); the chat's only turn gate is the per-conversation rail, internal/session/rail.go:58-82. Headless enforcement is cmd/codeaf/do.go:3885 (CrewSpendGuard(…, !preauthorized)).
• Acceptance (e2e): past the day limit, a chat turn and a chat /task are refused with the same sentence codeaf do uses, and the top bar never exceeds the limit by a new turn.

Found while writing the public docs; manual text differences are in #1545.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[AbirAbbas]

#1627 (ac84606f4) now enforces the daily limit for chat turns (on both roads, including spend from another conversation) and for crew tasks; both were checked by hand. Still open: a task started under --one-model gets no crew guard, and InTask agents skip the daily check (rail.go), so it spent $0.1018 against a $0.10 cap with no refusal. Dev had the same gap before, so this is not a regression. The daily check also runs once per turn, not per call. Leaving this open for that road.