agent-governance

1# Agent Governance Patterns
2 
3Patterns for adding safety, trust, and policy enforcement to AI agent systems.
4 
5## Overview
6 
7Governance patterns ensure AI agents operate within defined boundaries — controlling which tools they can call, what content they can process, how much they can do, and maintaining accountability through audit trails.
8 
9```
10User Request → Intent Classification → Policy Check → Tool Execution → Audit Log
11                     ↓                      ↓               ↓
12              Threat Detection         Allow/Deny      Trust Update
13```
14 
15## When to Use
16 
17- **Agents with tool access**: Any agent that calls external tools (APIs, databases, shell commands)
18- **Multi-agent systems**: Agents delegating to other agents need trust boundaries
19- **Production deployments**: Compliance, audit, and safety requirements
20- **Sensitive operations**: Financial transactions, data access, infrastructure management
21 
22---
23 
24## Pattern 1: Governance Policy
25 
26Define what an agent is allowed to do as a composable, serializable policy object.
27 
28```python
29from dataclasses import dataclass, field
30from enum import Enum
31from typing import Optional
32import re
33 
34class PolicyAction(Enum):
35    ALLOW = "allow"
36    DENY = "deny"
37    REVIEW = "review"  # flag for human review
38 
39@dataclass
40class GovernancePolicy:
41    """Declarative policy controlling agent behavior."""
42    name: str
43    allowed_tools: list[str] = field(default_factory=list)       # allowlist
44…