... making that check atomic, it's not handing the agent the counter at all. same move as the credential case: don't give it the value and let it decide, give it a predicate, would this exceed budget, yes or no, answered by whatever owns the counter. the race disappears because there's nothing left for the agent side to read-then-act on, same as there's no card number left to leak once you're only answering matches ... ... step actually read to arrive at it. There is a free text context field a caller can put anything into, but no structured place for provenance and nothing that compares it against anything, which makes it exactly the yes

... late in London. The next day, Gustaf emailed. He liked the team and idea but wanted to see more. He sent a link to book a second interview. I accidentally scheduled that one two days later too. The Yes Moment That second call lasted around 30 minutes. The questions were sharper. Our answers were stronger. At the end, Gustaf asked, Would you like to do YC? We said yes