Splenta

Arin - agentic operations for procurement

It runs the routine.
You decide the exceptions.

Arin is an exception-first agent that operates procurement for you. It works through the routine within the policy you set, then hands you only the pre-prepared decisions that actually need a person - each one ready to approve in a single move.

Arin / Action Queue1 of 10

approve a purchase order

PO-1007 is ready to approve

vendor
Acme Corp (tier A1)
amount
$8,421.00

Within budget, within terms, and the three-way match is clean. No risk signals fired.

cites policy po-auto-approve (≤ $10k, net-30)

A human hand and a robotic hand reaching toward each other
A human and machine working side by side. Photo is illustrative.

What Arin does

An operator for the work no one should read line by line.

Arin watches procurement, clears the routine within your policy, and prepares the few decisions that need judgment. One short line each, no jargon.

Action Queue

Prepared decisions, not alerts

Each exception arrives finished - a recommendation you accept in one move, with reasoning, confidence, alternatives and the exact write it will make.

Agent loop

An always-on loop

The agent reads procurement the moment it changes and runs on durable workflows, so a failed step just re-runs instead of a cron job hoping nothing crashes.

RiskDetection

Catches what loses money

Business-editable rules flag duplicate invoices, quiet bank-detail changes, unusual amounts and new vendors - before the payment leaves.

Reconciliation

Three-way reconciliation

Purchase order, receipt and invoice matched and closed within tolerance, so the routine clears itself and never reaches your desk.

Escalation

Hands off cleanly

Anything outside the policy you set is routed to the right person, SLA-driven - escalated, never silently dropped.

Governance

Policy and autonomy you dial in

Every autonomous action cites the rule that allowed it, and you set how far it acts for each capability - from watch-only to fully automatic.

The operating loop

Perceive, reason, decide, act or escalate, learn.

Arin runs one ordered cycle over your procurement record. Each pass clears the routine within policy, prepares the few decisions that need a person, and feeds what it learned back into the next pass.

01

Perceive

Reconciliation - reads the record as it changes

02

Reason

RiskDetection - DMN rules on the event

03

Decide

ActionPreparation - a prepared decision

04

Act or escalate

Escalation - within policy, or routed to a person

05

Learn

LearningSignal - captured for the next pass

loops back

The problem

A thousand events. Ten real decisions.

A procurement queue is mostly mechanical - purchase orders that match, invoices that reconcile, requisitions inside budget. Buried in the volume are the few that need judgment: a duplicate invoice, a bank-detail change, a new vendor with an odd amount. Today a person reads all of it to find those few. Arin flips the default actor.
  • The routine - matching POs, reconciling invoices - clears itself within policy
  • The few that need judgment surface as prepared decisions
  • You become the exception handler, not the throughput bottleneck
A dense network of connected nodesVolume in
A network of events. Illustrative photo.

Autonomy you dial in

Trust it as far as you want. No further.

Autonomy is a setting per capability, not a global switch. Below the line Arin asks; above it, Arin acts and cites the policy that let it. Move the capabilities you trust toward automatic and leave the high-stakes ones asking - the payment-adjacent ones cannot be pushed to full auto in v1. The dial itself is further down, under the hood.
  • Autonomy is a setting per capability, not a global switch
  • Below the line Arin asks; above it, Arin acts and cites the policy
  • High-stakes actions like payment release stay asking
A finance team reviewing work together at a deskYou decide
A team reviewing decisions together. Illustrative photo.

Where it fits

Where Arin sits, honestly.

Arin is not RPA (no UI clicks - typed tool calls), not a standalone chatbot, not a no-approval autonomous agent (policy-first and human-gated), and not an ERP (SCM holds procurement truth; Arin drives it). The neighbours assist or automate I/O; Arin adds the decision layer and operates. Each has a real place.

ArinP2P suitesAP automationRPAGeneric AI agent
What it isAn agent that operates procurementSource-to-pay workflow of recordInvoice capture and payment railsUI-clicking task automationA model that picks tools at runtime
How it actsTyped tool calls on the recordForms and configured workflowsFile and payment I/OClicks the screen like a personFree-form, often unbounded
Approval modelPolicy-first, human-in-the-loop, scope-boundedApproval chains you configureApproval rules for paymentsRuns the script; attended optionalApproval optional, often skipped
System of recordNone - it drives yours (SCM), never owns truthYes - it is the recordOwns the payment recordNone - it drives other appsDepends on the framework
AuditImmutable action record per writeFull procurement auditPayment audit trailRun logs and recordingsDepends on the framework

Arin is pre-1.0 and pre-revenue. P2P suites and AP automation keep their real breadth and payment depth; RPA keeps its reach across legacy screens; general agents keep their flexibility. Arin trades that for a bounded, policy-first operator on one system of record - and we say the trade-offs plainly.

Under the hood

Not RPA. Not a chatbot. A bounded operator.

The story above is the plain version. For evaluators, here is how it holds together - Arin authenticates as a resource server, can only call what its token scopes allow, and every write is a typed MCP tool call with an immutable audit trail.

The trust chain

Arin cannot click a screen and cannot act outside its token scopes. It authenticates on tokens minted by a separate authorization server, and each approval becomes exactly one scoped MCP call. Here is the exact chain behind a single PO approval.

  1. identityICE

    Sole OAuth 2.1 authorization server. Mints RS256 access tokens, publishes JWKS.

  2. resource serverArin

    No login form. Validates ICE tokens, authorizes on ICE-issued scopes, acts as an MCP client.

  3. one scoped callpo.approve

    Exactly one typed MCP tool call on approval. Not a UI click - a contract-typed operation.

  4. system of recordSCM

    Owns the status guard, procurement audit and outbox event. PENDING to APPROVED.

arin -> scm :: mcp tool callscoped: scm:po:*
POST /mcp/tools/call
{
"tool": "po.approve",
"args": { "id": "PO-1007" },
"auth": "Bearer <ICE-token>"
}
// SCM validates scope + status guard, then:
PO-1007.status: PENDING → APPROVED

proven end to end

operator → Arin action approval → MCP po.approve → SCM purchase order PENDING → APPROVED.

Not a slideshow. An automated family smoke test drives the full path across three services and asserts the status flip on every run.

family-e2e smoke: asserts PENDING → APPROVED

Anatomy of a prepared decision

An AgentAction arrives finished: a recommendation you accept in one move, the reasoning laid out, the evidence and alternatives, the exact policy it stands on, and a preview of the write it will make.

recommendHold INV-482 - do not release
reasoning$8,421 to Acme Corp matches INV-419 - same vendor, same amount - which cleared eleven days ago. No credit note explains a re-bill.
evidence12 months of Acme invoices scanned - 1 exact match
alternativesreject - INVESTIGATE - defer 24h
policyduplicate-window (14 days)
write previewSCM invoice.reject(INV-482) - blocked from the next payment run

The scopes it is granted

The blast radius is the token, and you set it. Arin holds a fixed set of ICE-issued scopes - it owns its own domain and can read and act on SCM, nothing more. Outside this set there is no capability to misuse.

ICE token -> Arin :: granted scopesRS256
// Arin owns its own domain
arin:agent-action:read|write
arin:policy:*
arin:autonomy:*
arin:escalation-rule:*
arin:mcp-source:*
arin:audit:read
// read/act on SCM, nothing more
scm:po:read
scm:invoice:read
scm:vendor:read
scm:item:*
// outside this set: no capability

Autonomy you dial in

Autonomy is a setting per capability, not a global switch. Each capability has its own level and its own ceiling - move the ones you trust toward Auto and leave the high-stakes ones asking. Payment-adjacent capabilities cannot reach full auto in v1.

L0 Observe

Watches and logs what it would do. Touches nothing.

L1 Suggest

Prepares every action. You approve each one.

L2 Auto-confirm

Handles the routine, batches a summary for you.

L3 Auto

Acts within policy, escalates only the exceptions.

Settings / Autonomydraft - not saved
3-way reconciliation

PO = receipt = invoice, matched and closed

cites: match-tolerance (2% / $50)

Duplicate detection

repeat invoices - same vendor, same amount

cites: duplicate-window (14 days)

PO approval

in-budget orders inside standard terms

cites: po-auto-approve (<= $10k)

Vendor bank-change

payout account edited before a run

cites: bank-change-hold (verify out of band)

Every autonomous action cites the rule that authorized it, written to the immutable audit log the instant it runs.

higher stops open as trust builds. L4 fully autonomous orchestration is not in v1.

Risk detection, on DMN rules

Risk detection runs on DMN decision tables - business-editable rules, not a black box. Each catch becomes a prepared decision before the money leaves. The rules are real code; the scenarios below are synthetic and labelled as such.

RiskDetectionHIGH

Bank-detail change

rule: new-bank-details

Acme Corp payout account edited 40 minutes before a scheduled run. Classic BEC pattern.

Hold the run - verify out of band before release

RiskDetectionHIGH

Duplicate invoice

rule: duplicate-invoice

INV-482 matches INV-419 - same vendor, same $8,421, cleared 11 days ago. No credit note.

Reject INV-482 - block from the next payment run

RiskDetectionHIGH

New-vendor amount spike

rule: unusual-amount

First invoice from a vendor added yesterday is 6x the median first-order for its category.

Escalate to AP - require a second approver

Synthetic scenarios for illustration - the DMN rules that fire them are real code.

Private - design-partner pilots

Hand the routine to the agent. Keep the judgment.

Arin is pre-1.0 and private - no public download, no self-serve sign-up. We are taking on a small number of mid-market finance teams as design partners, starting with procurement. Tell us about your stack and we will set up a look at the real approval loop.