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CapitalVault Specification

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CapitalVault

Intelligent Financial Automation, Built Around You.

CapitalVault is a locally hosted, secure, open source financial intelligence and automation specification designed to help individuals manage banking activity, financial goals, account limits, and financial products while maintaining continuous human control.

CapitalVault is designed around a human-in-the-loop model. The system may monitor financial activity, analyze financial conditions, identify opportunities, prepare recommendations, and prepare authorized transactions. It must never independently change its financial behavior, financial rules, monetary goals, permissions, limits, or operating authority without explicit human approval.

Purpose

CapitalVault provides an intelligent financial control layer that can coordinate financial accounts and monetary goals while preserving user ownership, privacy, transparency, and control.

The system is designed to:

  • Monitor financial accounts and balances.
  • Manage authorized transfers between accounts.
  • Apply user-defined account and transaction limits.
  • Work toward user-defined monetary goals.
  • Analyze income, expenses, liquidity, and cash flow.
  • Identify financial products that align with user-defined goals.
  • Monitor changes to relevant financial products and institutions.
  • Provide daily reports covering financial activity and system activity.
  • Detect unusual or potentially risky financial activity.
  • Require human authorization for changes to financial behavior.
  • Maintain a complete and auditable history of financial decisions and actions.
  • Keep sensitive financial intelligence under local user control.
  • Remain independent of any single bank, financial institution, AI provider, or financial-data provider.

Design Principles

CapitalVault is built around the following principles:

  • Human-in-the-loop control
  • Local-first financial intelligence
  • User ownership and control
  • Privacy by design
  • Security by design
  • Explicit authorization
  • Deterministic financial controls
  • Vendor neutrality
  • Financial goal alignment
  • Transparent decision-making
  • Complete auditability
  • Transaction provenance
  • Configurable automation
  • Fail-safe financial operations
  • Interoperable financial accounts
  • Open source development

Core Modules

Financial Account Management Module

The Financial Account Management Module provides a unified representation of the user’s financial accounts.

Features include:

  • Support for multiple financial institutions.
  • Support for multiple accounts and account types.
  • Account balance monitoring.
  • Available balance monitoring.
  • Pending transaction monitoring.
  • Account status monitoring.
  • Interest and yield tracking.
  • Fee tracking.
  • Account restriction tracking.
  • Institution relationship management.
  • Account metadata management.
  • Account connection status monitoring.
  • Read-only account support.
  • Account-level automation controls.

Financial Goals Module

The Financial Goals Module allows users to define the monetary outcomes CapitalVault is intended to help achieve.

Features include:

  • Short-term financial goals.
  • Medium-term financial goals.
  • Long-term financial goals.
  • Target balances.
  • Target dates.
  • Required contribution calculations.
  • Goal prioritization.
  • Goal funding status.
  • Goal progress tracking.
  • Goal conflict detection.
  • Liquidity requirements.
  • Emergency reserve requirements.
  • User-defined financial priorities.
  • Goal-specific account assignments.
  • Goal-specific financial product requirements.

CapitalVault must never create, modify, reprioritize, or remove a monetary goal without explicit human authorization.

Transfer and Banking Instruction Module

The Transfer and Banking Instruction Module manages authorized financial instructions.

Features include:

  • Transfers between user-owned accounts.
  • Transfers to approved external accounts.
  • Incoming transfer instructions.
  • Outgoing transfer instructions.
  • Scheduled transfers.
  • Recurring transfers.
  • Conditional transfers.
  • Transfer preparation.
  • Transfer verification.
  • Transfer status monitoring.
  • Transfer cancellation where supported.
  • Destination verification.
  • Source-account verification.
  • Available-funds verification.
  • Transfer history.

Every transaction must pass the applicable authorization and policy controls before execution.

Transaction Policy Engine

The Transaction Policy Engine provides deterministic controls between AI recommendations and financial execution.

Features include:

  • Maximum transaction limits.
  • Daily transaction limits.
  • Weekly transaction limits.
  • Monthly transaction limits.
  • Minimum account balances.
  • Minimum emergency reserves.
  • Approved destination controls.
  • Approved institution controls.
  • Transaction velocity limits.
  • Account-specific restrictions.
  • Goal-specific restrictions.
  • Financial-product restrictions.
  • Automated transaction restrictions.
  • Human approval thresholds.
  • Transaction rejection rules.
  • Transaction suspension rules.

The AI must never bypass the Transaction Policy Engine.

A recommendation from the AI must not constitute authorization.

AI Financial Intelligence Module

The AI Financial Intelligence Module provides financial reasoning and analysis while remaining subordinate to user-defined policies and human authorization.

Features include:

  • Natural-language financial instructions.
  • Financial situation analysis.
  • Cash-flow analysis.
  • Goal analysis.
  • Financial product analysis.
  • Transfer recommendations.
  • Account allocation recommendations.
  • Financial opportunity identification.
  • Risk identification.
  • Financial scenario analysis.
  • Recommendation explanations.
  • Action preparation.
  • Conflict identification.
  • User-facing financial reasoning.

The AI may recommend actions but must not independently expand its authority.

Human Authorization Module

The Human Authorization Module ensures that the user remains the final authority over changes to financial behavior and permissions.

Features include:

  • Explicit approval workflows.
  • Transaction approval.
  • Policy-change approval.
  • Goal-change approval.
  • Account authorization.
  • Destination authorization.
  • Financial-product authorization.
  • Automation authorization.
  • AI behavior-change approval.
  • Security-policy change approval.
  • Permission-change approval.
  • Emergency automation shutdown.
  • Account-level automation suspension.
  • Institution-level automation suspension.
  • Permanent authorization history.

CapitalVault must require explicit human authorization before changing any rule or behavior that affects financial activity.

Behavioral Control Module

The Behavioral Control Module prevents the AI from silently changing how it operates.

Features include:

  • Immutable AI authority boundaries.
  • Controlled financial behavior configuration.
  • Human-approved operating policies.
  • Human-approved financial priorities.
  • Human-approved automation permissions.
  • Human-approved transaction thresholds.
  • Human-approved account rules.
  • Human-approved destination rules.
  • Human-approved financial product criteria.
  • Before-and-after configuration records.
  • Behavioral change history.
  • Configuration versioning.
  • Immediate automation suspension.

The AI must never modify its own authority.

The AI must never modify its own financial objectives.

The AI must never modify its own transaction limits.

The AI must never modify its own approval requirements.

The AI must never modify its own security controls.

Any proposed behavioral change must be presented to the human for explicit approval before becoming active.

Daily Financial Reporting Module

The Daily Financial Reporting Module provides a complete daily account of CapitalVault activity.

Features include:

  • Daily financial activity reports.
  • Daily transaction reports.
  • Daily transfer reports.
  • Daily account activity reports.
  • Daily AI recommendation reports.
  • Pending approval reports.
  • Rejected action reports.
  • Blocked transaction reports.
  • Goal progress reports.
  • Financial product update reports.
  • Institution update reports.
  • Fee and rate change reports.
  • Security event reports.
  • Anomaly reports.
  • Human approval reports.
  • Human denial reports.
  • Configuration change reports.
  • Automation suspension reports.
  • External data update reports.

Daily reports must clearly distinguish between:

  • Observed activity.
  • AI analysis.
  • AI recommendations.
  • Human-approved actions.
  • Blocked actions.
  • Executed actions.
  • System-generated safety responses.

CapitalVault must generate a daily report even when no financial transactions occur.

Financial Product Intelligence Module

The Financial Product Intelligence Module monitors financial products and identifies products that align with the user’s monetary goals.

Features include:

  • High-yield savings product monitoring.
  • Money-market deposit account monitoring.
  • Checking account monitoring.
  • Certificate of deposit monitoring when enabled by the user.
  • Investment product monitoring where supported.
  • Interest and APY monitoring.
  • Fee monitoring.
  • Minimum balance monitoring.
  • Withdrawal restriction monitoring.
  • Transaction requirement monitoring.
  • Eligibility monitoring.
  • Promotional-rate identification.
  • Ongoing-rate identification.
  • Product-term monitoring.
  • Product availability monitoring.
  • Product comparison.
  • Goal-based product matching.
  • Product change detection.
  • Product history.

CapitalVault must evaluate products according to the user’s complete requirements rather than selecting products solely according to advertised yield.

Financial Institution Intelligence Module

The Financial Institution Intelligence Module maintains information about financial institutions and their products.

Features include:

  • Institution identification.
  • Institution ownership information.
  • Parent-company information.
  • Deposit insurance information.
  • Eligibility requirements.
  • Geographic requirements.
  • Account requirements.
  • Fee structures.
  • Transaction restrictions.
  • Product availability.
  • Product terms.
  • Institutional changes.
  • User-defined institution exclusions.
  • User-defined institution preferences.

Cash Flow Intelligence Module

The Cash Flow Intelligence Module analyzes current and projected movement of money.

Features include:

  • Income monitoring.
  • Expense monitoring.
  • Recurring transaction identification.
  • Cash-flow forecasting.
  • Future balance forecasting.
  • Expected income analysis.
  • Expected expense analysis.
  • Liquidity forecasting.
  • Shortfall detection.
  • Excess-cash detection.
  • Goal funding analysis.
  • Cash allocation recommendations.

Financial Goal Optimization Module

The Financial Goal Optimization Module evaluates available financial resources against user-defined objectives.

Features include:

  • Excess-cash identification.
  • Underfunded-goal identification.
  • Goal contribution recommendations.
  • Account allocation recommendations.
  • Financial product recommendations.
  • Liquidity preservation.
  • Reserve preservation.
  • Goal-priority analysis.
  • Financial scenario modeling.
  • Opportunity comparison.
  • Goal progress forecasting.

Optimization must remain subordinate to user-defined priorities and restrictions.

CapitalVault must never redefine the user’s financial objectives in order to improve an optimization result.

Transaction Verification Module

The Transaction Verification Module independently validates transactions before execution.

Features include:

  • Source account verification.
  • Destination verification.
  • Amount verification.
  • Currency verification.
  • Available-funds verification.
  • Account-limit verification.
  • Transaction-limit verification.
  • Goal-impact verification.
  • Policy verification.
  • Authorization verification.
  • Destination authorization verification.
  • Transaction fingerprinting.
  • Pre-execution confirmation.
  • Post-execution verification.

A transaction must not execute if required verification fails.

Security and Credential Protection Module

The Security and Credential Protection Module protects financial credentials and authorization information.

Features include:

  • Local credential protection.
  • Encryption of sensitive financial information.
  • Separation of credentials from financial intelligence.
  • Scoped financial permissions.
  • Limited authorization contexts.
  • Credential-access auditing.
  • Connection revocation.
  • Account disconnection.
  • Emergency credential invalidation.
  • Authentication controls.
  • Human authorization controls.
  • Protection against direct AI access to unrestricted credentials.

AI reasoning must not require unrestricted access to banking credentials.

Fraud and Anomaly Detection Module

The Fraud and Anomaly Detection Module identifies potentially dangerous or unexpected financial activity.

Features include:

  • Unusual transaction detection.
  • Unusual transaction amount detection.
  • Unusual destination detection.
  • Unusual timing detection.
  • Repeated transaction failure detection.
  • Account behavior-change detection.
  • Unexpected account changes.
  • Suspicious authorization changes.
  • Potential account takeover detection.
  • Financial activity anomaly scoring.
  • Automated safety suspension.
  • Human review workflows.

Anomaly detection may trigger a predefined safety response but must not grant the AI additional authority.

Compliance and Screening Module

The Compliance and Screening Module provides configurable compliance-related financial controls.

Features include:

  • Counterparty screening.
  • Institution screening.
  • Applicable sanctions-data integration.
  • Eligibility verification.
  • Compliance-rule evaluation.
  • Screening history.
  • Screening timestamps.
  • Potential-match review.
  • Compliance alerts.
  • Human review workflows.

CapitalVault must not represent AI-generated compliance analysis as legal advice or as a substitute for applicable professional or regulatory requirements.

Audit and Financial Provenance Module

The Audit and Financial Provenance Module maintains a complete record of system activity.

Features include:

  • User instruction records.
  • AI recommendation records.
  • Policy evaluation records.
  • Human approval records.
  • Human denial records.
  • Transaction records.
  • Configuration records.
  • Financial product records.
  • External-data provenance.
  • Timestamps.
  • Decision explanations.
  • Transaction fingerprints.
  • Configuration history.
  • Behavioral change history.
  • Security event history.
  • Report history.

The audit record must allow the user to determine what happened, why it happened, what rule permitted it, what information was used, and who authorized it.

Notification and Financial Intelligence Module

The Notification and Financial Intelligence Module provides timely information to the user.

Features include:

  • Daily financial reports.
  • Transaction notifications.
  • Approval requests.
  • Goal-progress notifications.
  • Financial product notifications.
  • Rate-change notifications.
  • Fee-change notifications.
  • Account warnings.
  • Liquidity warnings.
  • Anomaly alerts.
  • Security alerts.
  • Failed-action notifications.
  • Policy-conflict notifications.
  • Product opportunity notifications.

Notification severity and delivery preferences must be controlled by the user.

Optional Plugin Modules

CapitalVault should support optional plugins that extend the core without creating dependencies on specific providers.

Optional plugin modules may include:

Banking Institution Plugins

Provide connections to supported financial institutions for account information and authorized financial transactions.

Open Banking Plugins

Provide standardized connections to supported open-banking and financial-data services.

Brokerage Plugins

Provide optional connections to supported brokerage and investment accounts.

Payment Network Plugins

Provide optional payment and transfer capabilities where supported.

Financial Product Data Plugins

Provide financial product, rate, fee, restriction, eligibility, and institutional data.

Deposit Insurance Verification Plugins

Provide current deposit insurance and institution verification data.

Market Data Plugins

Provide optional market and investment information.

Tax Information Plugins

Provide optional tax-related information and analysis.

Income and Payroll Plugins

Provide optional income and payroll information for cash-flow analysis.

Cryptocurrency Plugins

Provide optional cryptocurrency account and transaction information while remaining subject to the same authorization, policy, and audit requirements.

Real Estate Financial Plugins

Provide optional real-estate-related financial information and accounts.

Notification Plugins

Provide optional delivery mechanisms for reports, alerts, and approval requests.

AI Model Plugins

Allow users to select or replace compatible AI reasoning systems without changing the financial policy architecture.

AI model plugins must remain subordinate to the same authorization, policy, security, audit, and human-in-the-loop controls.

Human-in-the-Loop Requirements

Human control is a foundational requirement of CapitalVault.

The system must never:

  • Change financial goals without approval.
  • Change account limits without approval.
  • Change transaction limits without approval.
  • Change approved destinations without approval.
  • Change approved institutions without approval.
  • Change financial product requirements without approval.
  • Change risk preferences without approval.
  • Change automation permissions without approval.
  • Change security policies without approval.
  • Change its own financial priorities without approval.
  • Change its own behavior without approval.
  • Grant itself additional authority.
  • Treat an AI recommendation as human authorization.

The system may automatically block or suspend an action when an existing safety rule requires it.

The system may not use that safety mechanism to create new permissions or modify its own operating rules.

Financial Automation Model

CapitalVault must maintain a separation between intelligence and execution.

The intended control model is:

User Goals and Rules → AI Analysis → Proposed Action → Policy Evaluation → Human Authorization Where Required → Transaction Verification → Financial Institution → Audit

The AI must never have unrestricted direct authority over financial accounts.

Daily Reporting Requirements

CapitalVault must provide the user with a daily report covering all material activity.

The report must identify:

  • What happened.
  • What the AI observed.
  • What the AI recommended.
  • What the user approved.
  • What the system executed.
  • What the system rejected.
  • What the system blocked.
  • What changed.
  • Why an action was proposed.
  • Which rule permitted or prevented the action.
  • How financial goals are progressing.
  • What financial products changed.
  • What risks or anomalies were detected.
  • Whether any human approvals are pending.

The absence of financial activity must also be reported.

Security Requirements

CapitalVault must prioritize protection of financial information and transaction authority.

Security requirements include:

  • Local control of sensitive financial intelligence.
  • Strong encryption for sensitive information.
  • Least-privilege financial authorization.
  • Separation of AI reasoning from transaction credentials.
  • Explicit transaction authorization.
  • Policy enforcement independent of the AI.
  • Complete auditability.
  • Tamper-evident activity records where supported.
  • Immediate automation suspension.
  • Account-level authorization controls.
  • Destination-level authorization controls.
  • Secure credential revocation.
  • Protection against unauthorized behavioral changes.

Privacy Requirements

CapitalVault should minimize external disclosure of financial information.

The system should:

  • Keep financial intelligence locally controlled.
  • Minimize external data transmission.
  • Provide transparency regarding external services.
  • Allow users to control external integrations.
  • Avoid unnecessary collection of financial information.
  • Separate personally identifiable information from AI reasoning where practical.
  • Provide mechanisms to remove external connections.
  • Maintain user control over stored financial history.

Vendor Neutrality

CapitalVault must not require dependence on a specific bank, financial institution, financial-data provider, AI model, payment network, or notification provider.

Provider integrations must be replaceable through modular interfaces.

The financial policy layer, human authorization layer, audit layer, and financial goal layer must remain independent from individual providers.

Fail-Safe Behavior

When required information is unavailable, inconsistent, stale, ambiguous, or unverifiable, CapitalVault must fail safely.

Fail-safe behavior may include:

  • Refusing to execute a transaction.
  • Requesting human approval.
  • Suspending automated transactions.
  • Marking information as unavailable.
  • Requesting updated financial information.
  • Generating a warning.
  • Maintaining read-only operation.

The system must never resolve an important financial ambiguity by granting itself additional authority.

Specification Branding License (SBL)

Standard

Optional

License & Notice Requirements

CapitalVault is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).

By contributing to any Open Arsenal project, you agree that your contributions will also be released under this license.

Please note the following:

  • All contributions must comply with the AGPL-3.0+ terms.
  • Under Section 7 of the license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works must preserve attribution to:
    Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.
  • CapitalVault specifications are free to use with attribution. A Specification Branding License can be negotiated upon request.
  • The project’s notice.md file tracks attribution requirements and contributor acknowledgments. Any update that adds new contributors or modifies attribution should also update notice.md.
  • When submitting a pull request, ensure that any new files maintain the attribution headers where applicable.
  • Network-deployed versions of this software must also remain fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant, including exposure of source code modifications when applicable under the license.

For full legal details, please refer to the AGPL-3.0+ license and the project’s notice.md file.

Notice – CapitalVault

Attribution Requirement: Under Section 7 of the AGPL 3.0+ license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works, including network-deployed versions of this project, must provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.

Contributors

This file tracks contributors and their specific contributions to the project.

  • Roxanne Ardary, roxanneardary.com – October 4, 2026
    Created the repository for CapitalVault. Created the specification for a locally hosted, secure AI financial automation system designed to manage banking instructions, financial goals, account limits, financial product intelligence, daily financial reporting, and human-controlled financial automation.
  • [Add other contributors here] – [Date]
    [Describe contribution in one sentence]

License – CapitalVault

This repository is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).

Key Points:

  • You are free to use, modify, and distribute the code.
  • All redistributions, forks, and derivative works or network-deployed versions must also be licensed under AGPL-3.0+ and provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com as required under Section 7 of the license.
  • The software is provided “as is,” without warranty of any kind.

For the full license text, see GNU AGPL-3.0 License.

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