AGENT OPERATIONS (AGENTOPS)

RUNTIME GOVERNANCE AND POLICY ENFORCEMENT Governance means the rules and oversight that control how a system may behave. Runtime governance means those rules are enforced while the agent is running, not just written in a document. Policy enforcement means automatic checking of every action against the rules. Think of a bank. Individual tellers have training and good judgment, but the bank also has hard controls: a teller cannot approve a very large withdrawal alone, because the system itself requires a manager's approval. That control does not depend on how confident the teller feels. In the same way, a policy engine sits outside the agent, inspects each proposed action, and allows, blocks, or sends it for human approval. The key advantage is that the rule is enforced regardless of what the agent's own reasoning decided, so a confused or manipulated agent cannot talk its way around it. Examples of policies include spending caps per agent and per day, restrictions on which data an agent may read, a requirement that deleting records needs human approval, blocking calls to unapproved websites, limits on how many emails can be sent per hour, and rules that certain actions are forbidden for specific user roles. A good policy system has an audit log recording every decision and a clear override process, so that a human with authority can grant an exception, and the exception is itself recorded.