Eight capabilities. One operating layer for the AI workforce.
Each one exists because an enterprise buyer refused to deploy without it. Pick a capability.
Eight capabilities, one control plane.
Agent Identity
Implemented Layer 01 · Identity & delegation
An agent is a first-class security principal, not a script running under a service account. It has an identity, it is issued credentials, and everything it does is attributable to it — in the same directory as your people.
- Humans and agents at par in one Members directory
- Credentials issued per worker, never shared
- Every action attributable to a named principal
- Retire a worker the way you offboard an employee
principal: agent:finance-recon-01
tenant: acme-corp
issuer: keycloak · OIDC
✓ attributable · 0 shared credentials
Delegated Authority
Implemented Layer 01 · On-behalf-of
When a person asks an agent to act, the agent acts on delegated authority — and when that agent hands off to another, the delegation chain travels with the request. You can always answer: on whose authority.
- A subject/actor chain on every hop
- An orchestrator can never exceed the requester
- Hand-offs are attributable, not anonymous
- Reachability graph bounds who may call whom
subject: alex.reed@acme
actor: agent:orchestrator → agent:kb-search
hops: 3 · all within requester scope
✓ delegation lineage intact
Policy Enforcement
Implemented Layer 03 · Policy & governance
Authorization is re-derived from the policy store at request time and enforced at the resource server — never trusted from a token claim, never left to the UI. Uncertain? The answer is no.
- Externalized ReBAC and ABAC, not in-app checks
- Enforced at the resource, so forged calls fail
- Deny-by-default egress
- Policies compile to runtime enforcement, not prompt text
package agentos.egress
default allow = false
allow { input.domain in approved_hosts }
# 0 violations in last 90d
Human-in-the-Loop Approvals
Implemented Layer 05 · Workflow control plane
Approval is a durable platform primitive, not application code. The agent proposes, a named human approves, and the workflow survives restarts while it waits — for minutes or for days.
- Survives process restarts mid-approval
- Approval gates bind to value, risk or resource
- Dual control where regulation demands it
- The decision lands in the audit ledger, not a chat log
⏸ approval pending → controller queue
waited 4h 12m across 2 restarts
✓ approved by m.okonkwo
✓ workflow resumed at step 4/7
Budget & Cost Governance
Implemented Layer 08 · Observability
Per-action token and cost capture attributed to worker, person, team and model supply channel. The same ledger enforces: quotas, budget envelopes on delegated work, and deterministic routing under budget pressure.
- Windowed quotas per tenant, agent, person or channel
- Budget envelopes travel with delegated work
- Deterministic fallback across supply channels
- No silent model downgrades
worker finance-recon · $1,204 MTD
envelope 78% consumed · window 30d
→ routing to channel B (deterministic)
✓ no silent downgrade
Audit & Evidence
Implemented Layer 08 · Governance-grade audit
Every action, delegation, policy decision and hand-off emits a structured, correlated audit event — reconstructable even across thousands of concurrent agents, and exportable to the systems your auditors already trust.
- Reconstruct who initiated, why, and which policy allowed it
- Correlated across agents and workflow restarts
- Immutable ledger, exportable to SIEM or S3
- Evidence packs assembled on request
trace 4f2a91 · support-triage
├─ policy.decide allow 12ms
├─ kb.search 240ms $0.004
└─ handoff → human review
Agentic Mesh
Implemented / Partial Layer 07 · A2A transport
Agents discover each other and delegate subtasks over the open A2A standard — with authorization-bound edges, so an orchestrator can never reach an agent the original requester could not.
- Open A2A transport over gRPC and HTTP
- Authorization-bound edges, not open discovery
- Reachability graph as an explicit artifact
- Agents stay lean, standalone services
mesh edge: orchestrator → kb-search
authz: inherited from subject scope
✗ orchestrator → payroll-agent — denied
✓ reachability graph enforced
Governed Connectors
Implemented / Partial Layers 13–14 · Knowledge & connector
Agents answer from your knowledge, not the open internet — and only the sources each is allowed to see. On the way back out, the egress gate replays the requester’s entitlement against the provenance of the content.
- Tenant-scoped retrieval with provenance to source
- Row and column ABAC over structured data
- Per-worker memory scopes
- Egress gate closes the confused-deputy gap
recall(“renewal risk”, k=12)
→ 12 nodes · 3 sources · 0 stale
egress: provenance ⊆ requester entitlement
✓ 4 of 12 nodes withheld
Looking for the deeper layer map?
The full layer map lives in Architecture; security posture lives in the Trust Center.
Architecture
The full layer map, from identity and delegation through to the egress gate.