agent-governance

Agent Governance Patterns

Patterns for adding safety, trust, and policy enforcement to AI agent systems.

Overview

Governance 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.

User Request → Intent Classification → Policy Check → Tool Execution → Audit Log
                     ↓                      ↓               ↓
              Threat Detection         Allow/Deny      Trust Update

When to Use

• Agents with tool access: Any agent that calls external tools (APIs, databases, shell commands)
• Multi-agent systems: Agents delegating to other agents need trust boundaries
• Production deployments: Compliance, audit, and safety requirements
• Sensitive operations: Financial transactions, data access, infrastructure management

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Pattern 1: Governance Policy

Define what an agent is allowed to do as a composable, serializable policy object.

from dataclasses import dataclass, field
from enum import Enum
from typing import Optional
import re

class PolicyAction(Enum):
    ALLOW = "allow"
    DENY = "deny"
    REVIEW = "review"  # flag for human review

@dataclass
class GovernancePolicy:
    """Declarative policy controlling agent behavior."""
    name: str
    allowed_tools: list[str] = field(default_factory=list)       # whitelist
    blocked_tools: list[str] = field(default_factory=list)       # blacklist
    blocked_patterns: list[str] = field(default_factory=list)    # content filters
    max_calls_per_request: int = 100                             # rate limit
    require_human_approval: list[str] = field(default_factory=list)  # tools needing approval

    def check_tool(self, tool_name: str) -> PolicyAction:
        """Check if a tool is allowed by this policy."""
        if tool_name in self.blocked_tools:
            return PolicyAction.DENY
        if tool_name in self.require_human_approval:
            return PolicyAction.REVIEW
        if self.allowed_tools and tool_name not in self.allowed_tools:
            return PolicyAction.DENY
        return PolicyAction.ALLOW

    def check_content(self, content: str) -> Optional[str]:
        """Check content against blocked patterns. Returns matched pattern or None."""
        for pattern in self.blocked_patterns:
            if re.search(pattern, content, re.IGNORECASE):
                return pattern
        return None