Create your first vault

Step-by-step walkthrough of creating a vault, choosing a policy, and funding it.

A vault is one on-chain covenant instance with a specific policy and a specific balance. This walkthrough covers creating one from the dashboard.

#Before you start

• Connect KasWare and confirm you're on the correct network.
• Decide, at least roughly, what policy you want: how much this vault will ever hold, whether you already know the agent you'll delegate to, and what limits make sense. You can always add or rotate an agent later — see Give an AI agent spending authority.

#Steps

1. From the dashboard, choose Create Vault.
2. Owner is filled in automatically from your connected wallet — this field is display-only; you never type or edit it.
3. Give the vault a label (a human-readable name — this is local display metadata, not part of the on-chain policy).
4. Set the initial policy fields relevant to the covenant version this deployment uses — typically: - an initial funding amount (in KAS), - a per-transaction limit (see Per-transaction limit), - a periodic budget and period length (see Periodic budget), - an optional destination allowlist (see Destination allowlist), - depending on the deployed covenant version, an agent key and approver set can be attached at creation or added afterward.
5. Review the request. PolicyVault builds the exact unsigned genesis transaction and, in the browser, independently re-derives what it does before any signature is requested — this is the same local intent verification step every spend goes through.
6. Sign in KasWare when prompted. Read what the wallet shows you; it should match what you configured.
7. PolicyVault submits the transaction and waits for chain proof — not just "submitted," but the actual expected covenant output observed on the network. Only then does the vault show as live. See Vault states for what each status on the dashboard means while this settles.

#After creation

• The vault's exact policy is now compiled into the covenant itself — it is not something a server operator, database administrator, or PolicyVault developer can quietly edit. Changing policy later (adding an agent, changing a budget, rotating a key) is itself a new owner-signed covenant operation, not a database update.
• Fund the vault further at any time with a top-up operation; this never requires re-creating it.
• You (the owner) retain the ability to pause the vault or perform terminal recovery at any time, independent of any hosted workflow — see Pause/revoke and Owner recovery.

Next: Create your first delegated spend.