The latest articles on DEV Community by Tyler (@tsouth2). https://dev.to/tsouth2 https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3972590%2F4eef4aa7-cde9-4d0d-aceb-d8f1b7a2ca9d.png https://dev.to/tsouth2 en Tyler Sun, 07 Jun 2026 13:55:01 +0000 https://dev.to/tsouth2/i-built-a-smoke-detector-for-ai-agent-wallets-lo5 https://dev.to/tsouth2/i-built-a-smoke-detector-for-ai-agent-wallets-lo5 <p>I built a spend monitor for AI agents making autonomous payments</p> <p>AI agents on x402/stablecoin rails can make hundreds of payments a minute with no human approval. There's no equivalent of a bank fraud alert for this yet — if your agent goes rogue or gets compromised, you find out when you check your balance.</p> <p>Burnwatch is a thin Python SDK shim that mirrors payment metadata to a backend that learns each agent's normal behavior and alerts when something looks wrong.</p> <p>What it detects: velocity spikes, drain bursts, unknown payees, new rails, off-hours spend, daily budget overruns, blocklist matches — 13 rules total, all transparent with human-readable evidence.</p> <p>Key constraint I kept: observe-only. It never touches keys or sits in the payment path. Fail-open — if my backend goes down, your agent keeps paying. I wanted this to be a smoke detector, not something that could accidentally block legitimate payments.</p> <p>Stack: FastAPI + PostgreSQL + React, hosted on Linode. Python SDK on PyPI.</p> <p>pip install burnwatch</p> <p>Launched today. Free during beta. Would love feedback — especially from anyone building on x402 or running agents that make real payments.</p> <p><a href="https://getburnwatch.southforgeai.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://getburnwatch.southforgeai.com</a></p> ai python webdev opensource