Research and agent development

AI Sandbox

The AI Sandbox is FNA's test service in which AI agents act for banks against Sampo on simulated payments. It runs on the Sampo Simulator. Each agent has its own bank's payments and uses Sampo as a bank would in production.

What an agent does

  • Sends, amends and cancels payment intents
  • Receives advice on which payments to submit now
  • Checks its funding against the funding checkpoint in the advice
  • Submits payments to a simulated RTGS
  • Reads its reports at the end of each day

Sampo coordinates across the banks in a session and gives each agent advice on its own payments only. An agent never receives another bank's payments.

List of upcoming advice for one bank, with each payment's time and the funding checkpoint.
An agent receives the same advice as a bank: the payments to submit now, each with its funding checkpoint.

Two ways to run a session

The AI Sandbox runs the clock

Turns

The AI Sandbox runs a simulated RTGS and the clock. It runs a simulated day in turns, so agents can take as long as they need in each turn. The AI Sandbox closes a turn when every agent has finished, or when the turn's time limit passes.

Your simulation runs the clock

External

An external payment simulation runs its own clock, agents and RTGS. It reports to Sampo what its RTGS did and asks Sampo for advice at each step.

A simulated day

  1. Check status

    The agent reads its seat's status: the simulated time, its payments, its net debit and its funding checkpoint.

  2. Read advice

    The agent reads Sampo's advice for this turn, which lists the payments to submit now. Advice lapses at the end of the turn.

  3. Check funding

    The agent checks each payment against the funding checkpoint in the advice, and receives its headroom after the payment (field headroom of check_release). A negative value is a shortfall.

  4. Submit

    The agent submits payments to the simulated RTGS, on the advice or on its own judgement.

  5. Send

    The agent sends new payment intents to Sampo (submit_instructions), and amends or cancels earlier ones.

  6. End the turn

    The agent ends its turn. When the day closes, each agent reads its reports.

How agents connect

Agents connect over a remote Model Context Protocol (MCP) server or an HTTP API with an OpenAPI 3 contract. Both offer the same operations.

The MCP server includes guidance written for an agent that has read nothing else: what Sampo does, how a turn works, what a seat can see, and the rules that cause rejections. Each tool's description states when to use it, what it returns and how to fix its common errors.

Each agent authenticates with an API key for its seat. Invited users create keys in the web interface. A key is shown once and can be revoked at any time.

Example: an agent's turn, as MCP tool calls

get_status()
get_advice()
check_release(sampo_payment_id=8)
submit_payments(ids=[8, 11], request_id="t42-submit")
submit_instructions(instructions=[...], request_id="t42-send")
end_turn()

The agent reads its status and Sampo's advice, checks its headroom after the payment for Payment 8 (check_release), submits Payments 8 and 11 to the simulated RTGS, sends new payment intents to Sampo (submit_instructions) and ends its turn. The documentation for invited users lists every operation, with its inputs and errors.

Synthetic sample days

Five synthetic days of payment intents, 500 payments between five banks each, from FNA's research generator. The data is calibrated to published Fedwire structure and contains no bank data. Each row gives the sender bank, receiver bank, amount, priority, earliest time, own time, and when the bank sends the payment intent to Sampo. The files carry no Sampo results: no advice, no submission times with Sampo and no peaks with Sampo. Terms of use: CC BY 4.0.

Data and access

Synthetic data only

Sessions run on synthetic payments. Do not upload real payment data.

No multi-party computation

The AI Sandbox holds payment data in the clear. Multi-party computation is part of the production design, not the AI Sandbox.

Deleted at expiry

When a session expires, the AI Sandbox deletes its log, outputs and exports. Logs contain no amounts, references or bank names.

By invitation

Access is by invitation, for research and agent development teams. Request access

Request access

Ask for AI Sandbox access, an evidence pilot on your own payments, or more information about Sampo. Submitting the form opens your email app with a message to phillip@fna.fi. You can edit it before you send it. This site sends and stores nothing.