Allocate budget with CVAR constraint

Maximize expected portfolio return while keeping probability-weighted loss CVaR below a finance-owned tail-risk ceiling across aligned joint scenarios.

What it's for

Gives CEOs and investors a capital plan that explicitly caps severe downside instead of ranking initiatives only by optimistic expected ROI.

What you give it

Inputs split into evidence read from your connected systems, calibration your team owns, and numerical controls that affect precision but never the result's meaning.

Field Type Role Required
budget number ≥ 0 Your calibration Yes
exact_item_limit integer ≥ 1, ≤ 24 Your calibration Optional
investments array of objects (3 fields) Evidence Yes
max_detail_rows integer ≥ 1, ≤ 500 Numerical control Optional
maximum_cvar_loss number ≥ 0 Your calibration Yes
scenario_probabilities array of number ≥ 3 items Evidence Yes
tail_probability number ≥ 0.001, ≤ 0.5 Your calibration Optional

Each investments record

Field Type Required
cost number (≥ 0) Yes
id string (non-empty) Yes
scenario_returns array of number (≥ 3 items) Yes
Example input
{
  "budget": 80,
  "investments": [
    {
      "cost": 50,
      "id": "growth",
      "scenario_returns": [
        -120,
        20,
        100,
        180
      ]
    },
    {
      "cost": 30,
      "id": "resilience",
      "scenario_returns": [
        70,
        40,
        20,
        10
      ]
    },
    {
      "cost": 25,
      "id": "efficiency",
      "scenario_returns": [
        15,
        25,
        35,
        45
      ]
    }
  ],
  "maximum_cvar_loss": 10,
  "scenario_probabilities": [
    0.1,
    0.2,
    0.3,
    0.4
  ],
  "tail_probability": 0.1
}

What you get back

This is the actual output of running the example above — computed by the same function the platform calls, not an illustration.

Example output
{
  "assumptions": [
    "Scenario returns are aligned joint worlds, not independently sampled marginals.",
    "CVaR is computed from finance-owned monetary loss at the declared tail probability.",
    "The no-investment portfolio is feasible; optimality is claimed only for exact enumeration."
  ],
  "decision": "cvar_constrained_allocation_supported",
  "method": "cvar_constrained_budget_allocation_v1",
  "selected_investments": [
    {
      "cost": 30,
      "expected_return": 25,
      "investment_id": "resilience",
      "standalone_cvar_loss": -10
    },
    {
      "cost": 25,
      "expected_return": 35,
      "investment_id": "efficiency",
      "standalone_cvar_loss": -15
    }
  ],
  "solver_diagnostics": {
    "candidate_portfolios_evaluated": 8,
    "feasible_candidate_count": 4,
    "optimality_proven": true,
    "portfolios_rejected_by_cvar": 3,
    "scenario_count": 4,
    "solver": "exact_enumeration"
  },
  "summary": {
    "budget_slack": 25,
    "expected_portfolio_return": 60,
    "maximum_cvar_loss": 10,
    "portfolio_cvar_loss": -55,
    "portfolio_var_loss": -55,
    "selected_count": 2,
    "selected_investment_ids": [
      "resilience",
      "efficiency"
    ],
    "tail_probability": 0.1,
    "total_cost": 55
  },

Truncated for display — the full payload is 46 lines.

How it works

Constrained optimization — Pick the best feasible option under real limits — budget, headcount, dependencies, capacity — rather than ranking a list and hoping it fits.

  1. 1 Freeze incremental investment costs and aligned joint scenario returns, normalize finance-owned probabilities, and define the loss tail and maximum acceptable CVaR before optimization.
  2. 2 Evaluate budget-feasible portfolios, calculate discrete probability-weighted VaR and CVaR from joint portfolio returns, and reject every portfolio above the tail-loss ceiling.
  3. 3 Choose the remaining portfolio with greatest expected return, retain cash when nothing is safe, and disclose whether enumeration proves optimality or a candidate heuristic was used.

Before you trust it

Every tool in the catalog ships with the conditions under which its answer is meaningful — and the conditions under which it should abstain instead of guessing.

Assumptions & guardrails

  • Objectives use commensurable locally governed value units, constraints reflect real feasibility, and uncertainty covers plausible adverse inputs.
  • Scenario columns are coherent joint worlds preserving diversification, concentration, and common shocks; they are not independently sorted marginals.
  • Loss, return, cost, time horizon, currency, probabilities, tail probability, and CVaR ceiling share one governed financial meaning.
  • The recommendation is optimal only for its stated objective, feasible set, evidence, and solver guarantee; it is not a universal management optimum.
  • CVaR summarizes the represented tail and cannot protect against omitted scenarios, model error, liquidity constraints, or causal misspecification.
  • The optimizer must not relabel accounting estimates as realized cash or an exact-mode result as a guaranteed investment outcome.

Minimum evidence

  • investments: required and organization-defined
  • scenario_probabilities: at least 3 rows/items
  • budget: required and organization-defined
  • maximum_cvar_loss: required and organization-defined

How to validate it

Backtest the chosen action against simple feasible baselines on held-out scenarios, sweep costs/constraints/risk tolerance, and require constraint feasibility under adverse inputs.

Calibrating it to your org

Same for everyone

The mathematical kernel, validation rules, method version, and JSON output semantics are organization-independent; no tenant-trained coefficients or company benchmark is embedded in the function.

Specific to you

  • aligned joint scenario return matrix preserving common shocks and diversification
  • currency, horizon, incremental return, probabilities, probability ambiguity, capital budget, tail probability, maximum CVaR loss, and exact-search boundary

Calibration workflow

  1. 1 Define the management decision, target outcome, aggregate unit, privacy boundary, cadence, and prediction/intervention horizon for this organization.
  2. 2 Build a tenant-scoped historical cohort using only information available before each prediction or decision; preserve zero periods, censoring, assignment probabilities, and unresolved outcomes when the method requires them.
  3. 3 Estimate statistical parameters on training history, but obtain costs, utilities, risk tolerance, practical-effect thresholds, capacity, and policy constraints from accountable decision owners.
  4. 4 Validate on later time windows or held-out aggregate units at the deployment grain, against a simple baseline and the function-specific validation strategy.
  5. 5 Deploy only if the returned decision clears evidence, overlap, calibration, robustness, and guardrail checks; warning, unsupported, schema-gap, and fallback decisions are abstentions.
  6. 6 Monitor realized outcomes, data drift, coverage, and decision regret; recalibrate at a governed cadence or after a detected regime/definition change, never merely because a stakeholder dislikes the result.

Call it from your AI

You don't wire up 388 tools in your MCP client. The GitRevio MCP server exposes 18 tools, three of which let an agent search the catalog, read a tool's schema, and run it — so the assistant finds this one on its own.

gitrevio_capabilities_search
  { "q": "maximize expected portfolio return while keeping" }
  → finds "allocate_budget_with_cvar_constraint"

gitrevio_capability_describe
  { "capability_id": "allocate_budget_with_cvar_constraint" }
  → returns the input schema and agent guidance shown on this page

gitrevio_capability_run
  { "capability_id": "allocate_budget_with_cvar_constraint", "arguments": { ... } }
  → returns the result shown above

Works in Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Continue.dev, Goose and Aider. See the MCP server.

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See every tool in Investment & portfolio choice →

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