The agent had an allowance in 1993.

General Magic’s Telescript paper is from November 1993. It imagines software agents traveling between computers, buying theater tickets and arranging flower deliveries.

Then page 13 gives the agent a permit. There are limits on its lifetime, size, and total resource use. The engine monitors consumption and terminates the agent if it goes over. A destination can also reduce what an arriving agent is allowed to do.

The allowance is the detail that got me. The design gets all the way from “send a program off to do something for me” to “what happens when it spends too much?” I’d happily sit through more of that part of an agent demo.