Can an AI agent offer a discount?
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It can propose one safely long before it can agree one. Those are two different permissions, and most companies control the second — who signs — while leaving the first wide open, which is backwards: by the time a signature is needed, the shape of the deal has already been set in a sentence somebody sent on Tuesday.
A buyer who has been told we can probably do fifteen percent has been given a number. Whether anyone had authority to agree it changes what happens next, but it does not change what the buyer now expects.
Proposing and agreeing, split on purpose
| proposing | agreeing | |
| the sentence | there is usually room at this volume | fifteen percent, confirmed |
| what it needs | a range somebody owns, and the words that keep it a range | the authority to bind the company |
| what it costs when wrong | an expectation to walk back | a price you have to honour |
| who holds it | can be the agent, within a ceiling | a person, every time |
An agent can hold the first and never the second. It describes what is usually possible, says what it depends on, and hands over — and the handover is recorded as something open, so the thing it half-promised is on a list somebody is looking at rather than in a thread nobody reopens.
The part nobody budgets for
A discount does not come back. Most of what an agent spends replenishes: a prospect's patience recovers, an enrichment credit resets at midnight, approval capacity clears as the queue clears. A discount precedent does the opposite — it holds, or it gets worse, and it keeps doing that after you have stopped giving them. The next buyer in that segment has heard what the last one got.
That is why the honest control here is a reported trend rather than another ceiling. The rule about what may be offered governs the deal; watching where the average has drifted tells you whether the rule is still being followed — and putting a cap in both places would be the same control disagreeing with itself.
What to actually set up
- Write the range down with an owner. Not be sensible — the actual figures, with the name of whoever is accountable for them being current.
- Let the agent propose inside it, in words that keep it a proposal: what it depends on, and who confirms.
- Keep agreeing with a person, and make the handover visible rather than a dead end.
- Read the drift, by segment. A discount policy that nobody has looked at in two quarters is a policy that has already changed.
What this does not do
It does not stop a human from agreeing something unwise, and it does not price your deals. It records what was offered, by whom, and on whose authority, and refuses to let an agent state a figure that no current source supports.
/what-should-an-ai-agent-be-allowed-to-promise.md is the full list of eight permissions this is one of. /agent-promise-register.md is where the range lives.