Welcome to Agentic Budget Building thatre-derives every dependent line when a start date moves.
A grant budget is a web of dependencies pretending to be a spreadsheet. Risely's agents hold the caps, the rates, and the cost-share as one model, and a research officer approves every version before it moves.
Budget · five-year proposal · constraint model
cap $500,000
the PI:
Total vs cap
checking
The budget is a web of dependencies.
Fringe follows salary. Indirect follows the base. The cap watches everything. Risely's agents hold each rule as a constraint on one model, so no line can quietly disagree with another.
What depends on what
A spreadsheet stores the answers. The model stores the rules, so the answers can never go stale.
One fact moves, and every line follows.
The postdoc's start slips to March. The model re-derives fringe, indirect, and the year totals in the same moment, so the officer reviews one consistent budget instead of hunting stale cells.
One change re-derives the rest
re-deriving
The old way left four stale cells across three spreadsheets. The model leaves none.
The cap is a rule the model cannot break.
Proposals bounce for missing a cap by $300. The solver refuses any draft over the line and names the line to fix, so the total clears with $210 to spare.
The cap check
checking
Every draft runs against the cap before anyone sees it.
Proposals bounce for a $300 miss. The model refuses the draft before anyone can save it.
The award starts from the proposal's own model.
Post-award setup begins from the same model the sponsor funded. Committed effort lands on the record at setup, which is where the audit goes looking first.
What the award inherits
Nobody re-keys the budget the sponsor just funded. Setup starts from the model that won.
One thing moves. The budget re-derives.
A slipped start date, a new fringe rate, a trimmed scope. Any of them changes what the numbers should say, and every one runs the same way.
A start date slips
the postdoc joins in March
Dependent lines re-derive
fringe and indirect follow the salary
The cap check re-runs
$210 of headroom holds
An officer reviews one diff
what changed and why
The documents re-render
the justification matches the model
What changes, and how it runs.
Every line agrees with every other
The model re-derives the moment anything moves.
Caps hold before the sponsor ever looks
The draft that misses by $300 never leaves the building.
Post-award setup starts from truth
The award record carries the effort the proposal committed.
The technical read
Connects read-only to your grants system, HR, and finance ledger to start
A research officer approves every budget version
Every action lands on an append-only log
Runs alongside what you have. Nothing rips out.