Most retail crypto investors evaluate AI trading agents the wrong way – they ask 'will it make money?' before they ask 'who controls my capital?' This playbook reframes that entirely. Before you connect a wallet, grant permissions, or delegate a single decision to an AI tool, you need a governance framework – not a performance backtest. This playbook gives you exactly that: a structured, step-by-step process for evaluating any AI crypto agent on custody risk, decision authority, kill-switch design, and the boundary between what you delegate and what you retain. No developer skills required. No institutional resources assumed. Just a clear, repeatable system you can apply to any AI agent or non-custodial research tool you're considering – so you stay in control of your capital at every stage. Includes a ten-step recovery sequence for the moment something goes wrong: how to recognize the three primary failure modes (scope creep, silent permission escalation, and liquidity lock-in), how to revoke permissions cleanly, and how to reconstruct what happened before you reconnect.
What's included
- A three-tier custody risk rubric that lets you grade any AI agent before you connect a wallet – covering the specific dimensions that determine how much control you're actually surrendering at setup
- A five-dimension due diligence template with the exact questions to ask any AI agent across decision authority, transparency, kill-switch design, data access, and failure accountability – structured so you can interrogate a tool without needing technical expertise
- A delegate-vs-retain matrix that maps every category of capital decision to the appropriate level of human or AI control – so you know precisely what to hand off and what to keep
- A step-by-step onboarding sequence for connecting an AI tool to your stack without surrendering control during setup – covering the specific permission and configuration decisions where retail investors most commonly over-delegate
- A weekly governance routine for running your own personal DeFi operating system – a repeatable review process that keeps you in active oversight of any AI tools you've deployed
- A failure-mode recognition guide covering the signs that an AI agent is exceeding its mandate – scope creep, silent permission escalation, and liquidity lock-in – paired with a ten-step recovery sequence for regaining control when something goes wrong
