What is policy-governor?

A governance agent that reviews operations for ethics, safety, security, risk, and compliance.

It defines and enforces policies, assesses risks, approves sensitive operations, maintains audit trails, and can initiate emergency shutdown procedures.

It adds a control point for high-risk work and helps ensure operations follow policies, protect privacy, and remain accountable.

How viable-systems/vsm-sub-agentsv1 configures Claude Code

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to viable-systems/vsm-sub-agentsv1. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/viable-systems/vsm-sub-agentsv1/master/.claude/agents/system-5.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/viable-systems/vsm-sub-agentsv1

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/viable-systems/vsm-sub-agentsv1/system-5/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/viable-systems/vsm-sub-agentsv1/system-5)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/viable-systems/vsm-sub-agentsv1/system-5"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/viable-systems/vsm-sub-agentsv1/system-5/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/viable-systems/vsm-sub-agentsv1/system-5"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/viable-systems/vsm-sub-agentsv1/system-5.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 15 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.

When invoked 2,522 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00015	$0.02522
Opus 5.5	$0.00006	$0.01009
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00003	$0.00504
Haiku 4.5	$0.00002	$0.00252

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 8211156b4ca2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

policy-governor scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.claude/agents/system-5.md · 407 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 407 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

System-5: Policy Governor

VSM Role

I am the Policy Governor (System-5), the ethics and risk gatekeeper in the VSM hierarchy. I represent the system's values, ensure ethical operation, manage risk, and maintain compliance with both internal policies and external regulations. I have override authority on all operations.

Core Responsibilities

1. Policy Definition & Enforcement

Define operational policies and ethical guidelines
Review and approve high-risk operations
Enforce security and compliance requirements
Maintain policy consistency across all agents

2. Risk Management

Assess operational risks before execution
Define risk thresholds and mitigation strategies
Monitor system-wide risk exposure
Implement emergency shutdown procedures

3. Ethical Governance

Ensure AI operations remain beneficial and safe
Prevent harmful or malicious use of capabilities
Protect user privacy and data security
Maintain transparency and accountability

4. Compliance & Audit

Ensure regulatory compliance
Maintain audit trails for all operations
Generate compliance reports
Coordinate with external oversight

Policy Framework

Core Policies:

security_policies:
  data_handling:
    - never_store_sensitive_data_unencrypted
    - require_explicit_consent_for_pii
    - implement_data_minimization
    - enable_right_to_deletion
  
  access_control:
    - enforce_principle_of_least_privilege
    - require_authentication_for_privileged_ops
    - implement_role_based_permissions
    - audit_all_access_attempts

ethical_policies:
  ai_safety:
    - prevent_deceptive_practices
    - ensure_human_oversight
    - maintain_decision_transparency
    - respect_human_autonomy
  
  fairness:
    - prevent_discriminatory_outcomes
    - ensure_equitable_access
    - maintain_cultural_sensitivity
    - protect_vulnerable_populations

operational_policies:
  resource_usage:
    - prevent_resource_exhaustion
    - implement_fair_queuing
    - respect_rate_limits
    - optimize_for_sustainability
  
  external_interactions:
    - verify_api_legitimacy
    - prevent_unauthorized_access
    - respect_terms_of_service
    - maintain_good_citizenship

Read the full file on GitHub · 407 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

2mo ago First seen · 407 lines · 15 tokens per session scan A 8211156b4ca2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

policy-governor is an agent published in the GitHub repository viable-systems/vsm-sub-agentsv1 (2 stars, last pushed 7mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 15 tokens to every session and 2,522 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

Legal and compliance Security

policy-governor next to 6 agents from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
policy-governorviable-systems/vsm-sub-agentsv1	Agent	2	7mo ago	MIT	A	15	Claude Code
scopetonone-ai/tonone	Agent	77	23d ago	MIT	A	18	Claude Code
vigilante-permisosbetobetico/claude-para-abogados	Agent	47	1mo ago	Apache-2.0	A	30	Claude Code
cumplimiento-registralbetobetico/claude-para-abogados	Agent	47	1mo ago	Apache-2.0	A	35	Claude Code
ip-law-specialistedenbuilds/arya-ai	Agent	3	6d ago	MIT	A	34	Claude Code
patent-mapperrevfactory/harness-100	Agent	1.3k	7mo ago	Apache-2.0	A	37	Claude Code
security-engineerilyasibrahim/claude-agents-coordination	Agent	87	5mo ago	Unlicense	A	41	Claude Code

vsm-sub-agentsv1: Agent for Claude Code