1 · What a mandate is
A mandate is the authority your agent works under for one ticket or conversation: which customer, which actions, how much, how many times and until when. COLVO Guard checks every proposal against it — rules, not another AI.
2 · The limits, one by one
max_amount_minor— the most that can be refunded under this mandate in total. Above it: DENY.auto_allow_up_to_minor— per refund, what goes through without a person. Above it (within the max): REVIEW.max_operations— how many actions in total. One more: DENY.cancel_modes_allowed/cancel_modes_review— for example cancel at period end allowed, immediate cancellation only after approval.expires_at— after this, every proposal is DENY.
Amounts are in minor units: 5000 is €50.00.
3 · Build one in your browser
Open the free mandate builder, tick refunds and cancellations, set the maximum and the approval threshold, and copy the JSON. It is exactly the body of POST /v1/mandates.
4 · See each limit become a decision
Run the suite: the scenarios include over-limit refunds, a second refund on the same payment and immediate cancellations, so you see DENY, REVIEW and ALLOW against your own numbers before a customer does.
Checkpoint: a refund above
max_amount_minor shows DENY with the reason written out — and nothing changed in Stripe.