About
Monetal Labs is an independent practice run by Gunjit Mittal. Proof over Persuasion is its main body of work.
- Why this work
Much of today’s fraud doesn’t break in. It persuades someone who has the authority to act, and the system does exactly what it was told. That someone can now be an AI agent: one that holds a wallet, sets prices, grants refunds or takes orders.
If an attacker needed to break in, it’s a security problem. If they only needed the agent to believe them, it’s a design problem: the system let persuasion move money, goods or data. That’s the part I work on.
- What I publish
- The Gamed AI Agents Register: incidents in which AI agents with authority were manipulated, graded by the strength of their evidence.
- Design Principles for AI Agents: rules derived from the register, each with its status and the incidents behind it.
- Analyses: one entry at a time, with the design gap and the principle that would have closed it.
The register and the principles are released monthly, with a change log.
- Who it’s for
Owners and finance, credit, payables and order-desk leaders at companies starting to let AI agents act for them, beginning with industrial distributors and manufacturers. Also the people who build those agents.
- What it isn’t
This is not cybersecurity, compliance, legal advice, certification or fraud-detection software. Nothing here promises that a system can’t be fooled. The principles describe where authority should live, so that persuasion alone can’t move value.
- Background
My background is in data platforms: access controls, semantic layers, data quality, and reconstructing what a system knew at a point in time. That’s the evidence an agent leaves behind when it moves money, and it’s why the principles put weight on recording what an agent was told and why it acted (DP-10).
- How it’s made
Everything comes from public sources. The register is researched and drafted with AI assistance, and every fact is checked against its cited source. Nothing is edited silently: changes go in the change log.
- Get in touch
If your company runs an AI agent that can move money or make commitments, or you’ve seen one gamed, I’d like to hear from you. Corrections to the register are welcome too.
- Earlier research
Before this, Monetal Labs studied AI pricing in logistics software. That work is kept as it was published, under Earlier research.