Agent Runtime Governance is a public seed repository for runtime governance for agents.
Patterns for governing agents during execution: authority, review, receipts, interrupts, and escalation.
- Kill switch: An explicit stop mechanism that halts an agent, workflow, or integration when continued execution is unsafe or unauthorized.
- Circuit breaker: A temporary control that pauses or degrades execution after repeated failures, policy violations, or risk signals until review or recovery completes.
- Guardrail: A runtime constraint that guides acceptable behavior, such as allowed tools, data boundaries, approval requirements, or escalation rules.
- Admission control: The decision point that determines whether a request, tool call, policy packet, or execution step may enter a governed workflow.
- Fail-closed vs fail-open: A fail-closed path denies or stops execution when required governance checks cannot complete; a fail-open path allows execution to continue under those conditions.
- Policy enforcement point: The component that applies a governance decision at runtime, such as blocking a call, requiring review, logging a receipt, or routing to escalation.
Use CONTRIBUTING.md for contribution process and docs/v0.1-boundary.md for the current repository maturity boundary.
Early public seed repository. Candidate namespace only.
- Define the domain clearly.
- Collect prior art and adjacent ecosystem references.
- Provide reusable schemas, examples, and templates.
- Support human review and agent execution.
- Preserve provenance, auditability, and governance boundaries.
- This repo is not a universal standard.
- This repo does not claim ownership of the broader field or terminology.
- This repo does not canonize HUMMBL/BaseN/Ownward concepts unless explicitly marked and audited.
- This repo must not include private, internal, or secret operational content.
All content is exploratory unless later adopted through a reviewed governance path.
This README now defines the core governance terms used by the repository and links first-time contributors to the contribution process and v0.1 boundary.