Document Type: Protocol
Status: Active
Version: v1.0
Authority: Finance Brain (governed by MWMS HeadOffice)
Applies To: Affiliate Brain budget requests for bounded offer testing, Finance Brain review of those requests, and HeadOffice review or escalation where required
Parent: Finance Brain Canon
Linked Systems:
Affiliate Brain Opportunity Queue
Affiliate Brain Offer Intelligence Standard
Affiliate Brain Offer Scoring Model
Finance Brain Capital Allocation Ladder
Finance Brain Capital Efficiency Decision Model
Finance Brain Financial Risk Escalation Logic
Finance Brain Dashboard Financial Signal Indicators
HeadOffice
Last Reviewed: 2026-04-02
Purpose
This protocol defines how Affiliate Brain requests testing capital from Finance Brain for affiliate opportunities.
It exists to create a disciplined financial handoff between opportunity evaluation and capital deployment.
The protocol ensures that:
- Affiliate Brain does not self-authorise budget beyond its authority
- Finance Brain receives a structured commercial case rather than loose commentary
- Finance Brain returns a clear financial decision, not general discussion
- HeadOffice retains review and escalation authority where cross-Brain or higher-risk conditions apply
- live testing remains bounded by predefined financial constraints
This protocol is the operational bridge between affiliate opportunity assessment and financial approval.
Scope
This protocol applies to:
- initial budget requests for affiliate offer testing
- retest requests where an opportunity previously failed or stalled
- budget expansion requests after early signal validation
- budget restriction or pause decisions triggered by weak performance or risk
- escalations from Finance Brain to HeadOffice where thresholds, ambiguity, or authority limits require review
This protocol governs:
- request structure
- ownership roles
- mandatory evidence inputs
- Finance Brain response structure
- permitted decision classes
- escalation conditions
- ongoing review expectations after approval
This protocol does not govern:
- research evidence collection itself
- creative production
- campaign execution
- platform-level optimisation
- final cross-system override authority belonging to HeadOffice
Definitions
Affiliate Testing Capital Request
A structured request sent from Affiliate Brain to Finance Brain asking for capital approval for bounded offer testing.
Bounded Testing
A financially limited testing period with predefined spend caps, continuation rules, and stop conditions.
Decision Class
The formal Finance Brain output category returned in response to a request.
Examples include:
- approve
- approve with constraints
- defer pending evidence
- reject
- escalate to HeadOffice
Financial Guardrails
The spend, loss, pacing, exposure, confidence, or review conditions applied by Finance Brain to protect capital during testing.
Review Owner
The system authority responsible for reviewing disputed, high-risk, or escalated decisions.
Rules
Rule 1 – Primary Brain Ownership
This protocol is Finance Brain owned.
Affiliate Brain may prepare and submit the request case.
Finance Brain owns:
- financial assessment
- budget eligibility decisioning
- guardrail setting
- escalation recommendation where required
HeadOffice owns:
- cross-Brain review
- exception handling
- final override authority where governance or system risk requires it
Rule 2 – Standard Request Roles
Each request under this protocol must declare:
- origin owner
- destination owner
- review owner
- escalation owner where required
Default ownership under this protocol:
- origin owner = Affiliate Brain
- destination owner = Finance Brain
- review owner = HeadOffice
- escalation owner = HeadOffice unless Finance Brain canon explicitly routes a narrower financial escalation path
Rule 3 – When Affiliate Brain Must Request Finance Review
Affiliate Brain must send a Finance request when any of the following apply:
- a new offer is being proposed for paid testing
- an existing offer is requesting increased budget
- the expected cost structure materially changed
- the revenue classification or payout reliability is uncertain
- downside exposure is unclear
- prior test performance creates ambiguity about whether continuation is financially justified
Affiliate Brain must not self-authorise financial expansion merely because an offer appears promising.
Rule 4 – Minimum Input Required from Affiliate Brain
Every request must include the following minimum fields:
- Opportunity Identity
- offer name
- network or source
- category
- geography if relevant
- platform intent if known
- Commercial Summary
- core offer model
- payout or revenue structure
- known conversion event
- known or assumed customer value mechanics
- Opportunity Assessment
- Affiliate Brain opportunity score
- viability summary
- key reasons the offer is considered test-worthy
- major known weaknesses or unknowns
- Evidence Position
- research status
- source confidence summary
- evidence gaps still unresolved
- whether evidence is direct, inferred, or provisional
- Financial Inputs
- expected payout
- known upfront costs
- expected traffic acquisition model
- any known platform or operational fees
- refund, clawback, approval-delay, or reversal risk if known
- Testing Proposal
- requested budget
- proposed first test boundary
- expected signal window
- proposed stop, hold, or expansion logic from Affiliate Brain
- Risk Notes
- compliance uncertainty
- merchant reliability concerns
- tracking uncertainty
- landing page quality concerns
- market saturation concerns
- any material downside signal already observed
If these fields are incomplete, Finance Brain may return defer pending evidence without giving a spend decision.
Rule 5 – Finance Brain Assessment Duties
Finance Brain must assess the request against financial rather than creative criteria.
Finance Brain review must consider:
- capital exposure
- downside containment
- payout quality
- revenue reliability
- cost structure clarity
- forecast plausibility
- testing efficiency
- budget-to-learning ratio
- financial pressure interactions with current system state
- escalation need
Finance Brain must not convert this review into:
- creative judgement
- offer sourcing activity
- copy critique
- campaign optimisation detail
Rule 6 – Permitted Finance Brain Decision Classes
Finance Brain may return only one primary decision class per request:
Approve
The request is financially acceptable within the proposed or adjusted test bounds.
Approve With Constraints
The request is acceptable only under explicit restrictions.
Defer Pending Evidence
The request is not ready for capital because required evidence or financial clarity is insufficient.
Reject
The request is currently financially unjustified or too exposed relative to available evidence and system conditions.
Escalate To HeadOffice
The request contains authority conflict, material ambiguity, system-level importance, or downside conditions that exceed normal Finance Brain decision scope.
Rule 7 – Mandatory Finance Brain Response Structure
Every Finance Brain response must include:
- request identifier
- decision class
- approved budget or budget band if applicable
- guardrails
- key financial reasons
- key unresolved concerns
- review trigger conditions
- escalation status
- next required owner action
Where relevant, Finance Brain should also state:
- pacing constraint
- maximum tolerated downside
- signal review point
- conditions for budget expansion
- conditions for forced pause
- confidence rating on the financial decision
Rule 8 – Guardrails Must Be Explicit
A budget approval is invalid unless accompanied by explicit guardrails.
Guardrails may include:
- maximum spend cap
- maximum acceptable loss before review
- required review checkpoint
- payout validation requirement
- reversal-risk watch condition
- tracking verification requirement
- evidence refresh requirement before scale consideration
- restriction to a defined test stage only
Finance Brain must never issue open-ended approvals.
Rule 9 – HeadOffice Escalation Triggers
Finance Brain must escalate to HeadOffice where any of the following apply:
- the request crosses multiple Brain authorities in a way that changes ownership
- financial risk is materially high relative to current system tolerance
- the case is strategically important beyond ordinary offer testing
- available evidence is contradictory but action pressure is high
- Finance Brain and Affiliate Brain materially disagree on the correct path
- approval would set a precedent that likely needs governance review
- financial signals interact with broader system health or portfolio exposure
HeadOffice may uphold, modify, delay, or override the Finance Brain decision.
Rule 10 – Post Approval Monitoring
Once approval is granted, the opportunity must remain under financial observation.
At minimum, the live test record must support tracking of:
- approved budget
- spent amount
- current performance status
- review checkpoint due state
- continuation eligibility
- restriction flags
- escalation flags
Finance Brain is not required to run campaigns.
Finance Brain is required to assess whether the live test remains inside the approved financial envelope.
Rule 11 – Budget Expansion Rule
No budget expansion may occur unless one of the following is true:
- the original Finance approval explicitly defined an automatic expansion condition and that condition was met
- Finance Brain performs a fresh review and returns an updated decision
- HeadOffice overrides under explicit review
Affiliate Brain enthusiasm alone is not sufficient to expand capital.
Rule 12 – Rejection Does Not Equal Permanent Ineligibility
A rejected request may be resubmitted only when the underlying reason for rejection materially changed.
Examples:
- better evidence quality
- improved payout reliability
- reduced exposure
- stronger initial signal quality
- clarified cost structure
- better tracking integrity
Resubmissions must state what changed.
Rule 13 – Minimum Short Form Output Template
For implementation simplicity, Finance Brain responses should be renderable in this structure:
Request ID:
Origin Owner:
Destination Owner:
Review Owner:
Escalation Owner:
Decision Class:
Approved Budget:
Budget Stage:
Guardrails:
Financial Rationale:
Unresolved Risks:
Review Trigger:
Escalation Status:
Next Action Owner:
Next Action:
Rule 14 – Architectural Intent
This protocol exists so that MWMS capital decisions are disciplined, explainable, and structurally separate from opportunity enthusiasm.
Affiliate Brain may identify promising opportunities.
Finance Brain determines whether those opportunities deserve bounded financial exposure.
HeadOffice remains the system-level review authority where needed.
Outcome
This protocol creates a controlled path from affiliate opportunity evaluation to financial approval.
It allows Affiliate Brain to move work forward without self-authorising capital.
It allows Finance Brain to contribute operationally without taking over research, creative, or campaign execution.
It gives HeadOffice a clean escalation surface for higher-risk or cross-authority cases.
Change Log
Version: v1.0
Date: 2026-04-02
Author: Finance Brain / drafted in governed MWMS development session
Change: Initial creation of Finance Brain Affiliate Testing Capital Request Protocol to define Affiliate → Finance budget request structure, Finance decision classes, mandatory guardrails, and HeadOffice escalation conditions.