Approval and safety

The spend, secret, replay, storage, and cleanup rules an unattended agent must follow.

Read and write actions are different

amics gpu recommend reads live capacity. It does not create a resource. amics run may acquire paid compute. An agent must not infer approval for the second action from a request for the first.

Approval must be bounded

Before an unattended acquisition, establish:

Bound	CLI option	What it controls
Maximum hourly rate	`--max-hourly-price`	Compute and its attached runtime disk
Command deadline	`--max-runtime`	How long the remote command may run
Warm reuse window	`--keep-warm`	How long compatible compute may remain after the command; billing can extend from each run that requests it
Persistent storage	`--workspace`	Existing durable storage that bills until deleted

--yes records that approval already exists. It does not create approval.

Keep secrets local by default

Amics does not implicitly forward the agent login, Git credentials, SSH keys, cloud credentials, or model credentials. Forward one environment value by local name only when the workload needs it:

export HF_TOKEN=...
amics run [OPTIONS] --env HF_TOKEN -- python train.py

Do not place secrets in command arguments. In particular, --api-key can leak through process listings, shell history, and CI logs; prefer AMICS_API_KEY or the saved login. The remote command can still leak a forwarded value if it prints it.

For a multi-run loop, request --keep-warm only on the priming run. Reuse its compute_id on later runs without repeating --keep-warm, or obtain renewed approval for a longer window.

Treat unknown as possibly executed

If Amics cannot prove the command outcome after an interruption, the run becomes unknown. Inspect the accepted run:

amics runs get RUN_ID
amics runs logs RUN_ID --follow

Do not submit a replacement until a person or policy decides that replay is safe. This matters for commands with non-repeatable side effects.

Separate cleanup decisions

Auto-acquired compute stops after the command unless a warm lease was approved.
--detach does not extend the command or warm deadline.
Compute passed with --compute is user-supplied and is not stopped implicitly.
amics runs cancel RUN_ID --stop-compute is appropriate only when stopping the resource is also intended.
A durable workspace survives compute and keeps billing until it is explicitly deleted. Deletion is irreversible.

Agent checklist

Before execution, an agent should be able to state the command, source root, GPU requirement, price ceiling, command deadline, warm lease, forwarded environment names, attached workspace, output mode, and cleanup behavior.