linkgate — Policy Firewall for AI Agent Payments

Give agents spending power.
Not unlimited power.

Stripe Link for Agents lets AI spend on your behalf. That's powerful — and terrifying. linkgate sits between your agent and your money, enforcing budgets, blocking risky merchants, and requiring human approval before any payment goes through.

Get Started

The Problem

"What if my agent buys a $249 Adobe subscription? Or a surprise $500 crypto order? Or keeps creating approval requests until I cave?"

You need a policy firewall between the agent and your money. linkgate is a local-first CLI that enforces spending rules before any payment credential is created.

What linkgate Does

Budget Enforcement

Per-transaction caps, daily/monthly budgets, and automatic block when limits are hit. No surprises.

Merchant Control

Allowlists for trusted merchants. Blocklists for crypto, gambling, gift cards. Pattern matching via regex.

Approval Workflows

Require human approval for purchases over a threshold. The agent stops and explains why.

Audit Everything

Every decision, every agent, every time — logged locally in structured JSONL. Search, filter, export.

Fake Adapter

Test your entire policy pipeline without a real Stripe Link account. Infinite free testing.

Agent Identification

Track which agent made which spend. Per-agent budgets and accountability. No shadow spending.

Install

        npm i -g linkgate
        # One command, global install
        
        linkgate init
        # Creates ~/.linkgate/ with default policy
      

Edit ~/.linkgate/guard.yaml to match your rules.

Check a spend (dry run)

        linkgate spend check \
          --merchant-url https://github.com \
          --amount 1200 \
          --reason "GitHub Copilot seat"
      

Full flow (with enforcement)

        linkgate spend create \
          --merchant-url https://github.com \
          --amount 1200 \
          --reason "GitHub Copilot seat" \
          --adapter fake  # or 'link' for real Stripe Link
      

Verify state

        linkgate status  # Budget, events, license tier
        linkgate doctor  # Pre-flight prerequisite check
      

How It Works

Agent → SKILL.md / MCP instructions → linkgate
  → Policy checks (amount, merchant, budget, category)
    → Decision: ALLOW / DENY / REQUIRE_APPROVAL
      → If allowed → delegate to @stripe/link-cli
        → Stripe Link handles wallet approval
      → linkgate writes audit log
      

linkgate does not store or touch card credentials, PANs, CVVs, or payment tokens. Stripe Link handles all wallet operations. linkgate handles the policy decision.

Pricing

Free

forever

Unlimited policy checks
Unlimited fake-adapter testing
1 real Link spend/day
Last 100 audit events

Best Value

Pro Annual

$39

/ year

Unlimited real Link spends
30-day audit history
CSV/JSONL export
Per-agent budgets
Category budgets
JSON + pretty output
Multi-machine sync

Buy Annual

Pro Monthly

/ month

Same features as Annual
Cancel anytime
Non-renewing

Buy Monthly

License keys are delivered via email after purchase. Activate with linkgate license activate LGPRO-...

Feature Comparison

Feature	Free	Pro
Policy engine	✓ Unlimited	✓ Unlimited
`spend check` (dry run)	✓ Unlimited	✓ Unlimited
`spend create --adapter fake`	✓ Unlimited	✓ Unlimited
`spend create --adapter link`	1 / day	✓ Unlimited
Audit terminal view	Last 100	30 days
Audit export (CSV/JSONL)	✗	✓
Output format options	pretty only	JSON, CSV, pretty
Per-agent budgets	✗	✓
Category budgets	✗	✓
MPP commands	✗	✓
Multi-machine sync	✗	✓

Built for Agents

Drop this into your agent's instructions or AGENTS.md:

When an agent needs to make a payment:
Always use linkgate, never raw link-cli
Run: linkgate spend check --merchant-url <url> --amount <cents> --reason "description"
If allowed, run: linkgate spend create (same args, optional --adapter link)
If denied or require_approval, stop and explain why
      

Integrations:

OpenClaw — Register as AGENTS.md skill or MCP tool
Claude Code — Add to CLAUDE.md
Docker — Install via Dockerfile, mount volumes for persistence

For LLMs / Agent Developers

linkgate exposes a predictable, documented CLI interface. Every command returns structured JSON. The policy engine is deterministic. The audit log is append-only. This is the safest way to give an agent real spending power.

Read llms.txt →

Security

linkgate does not store credentials. No PANs, no CVVs, no tokens.
Stripe Link handles all wallet operations. We just say yes or no.
Local-first. Your rules, your machine, your data. No cloud dependency.
Audit logs are metadata only. Merchant name, amount, decision, timestamp — no payment details.
Enforcement is voluntary but verifiable. Agents must be configured to use linkgate instead of raw link-cli.

Not affiliated with Stripe. Built independently on top of Stripe Link for Agents.

Give agents spending power.Not unlimited power.