Why AI agents need a control plane
AI agents can take irreversible actions. A single gate—your policies, full audit—is the only way to stay in control.
AI agents are showing up in refund flows, email, CRM updates, ticket closure, data deletion, and account changes. When they get it wrong, the damage is real: money out the door, sensitive data exposed, or a VIP customer record changed without approval.
The fix isn’t to stop using AI. It’s to put a control plane in front of every action: one gate that evaluates every request against your policies, approves or escalates, and logs every decision in an immutable, exportable audit trail.
What a control plane gives you
- Deterministic policies — No LLM in the decision path. Same input, same result. Refund over $50? Escalate. Email to more than 100 recipients? Escalate. VIP edit? Escalate. Your rules, your thresholds. - Human escalation — When a policy says “no,” the request goes to a human queue. Approve or deny; every override is recorded. So you stay in control without blocking every action. - Full audit — Who did what, when, and whether it was human-approved. Hash-chained log, exportable for regulators and insurers. That’s what CISOs and compliance teams need.
Why “AI agents” first
AI agents are the forcing function: they’re the ones touching refunds and sensitive data today. But the same control plane works for bots, scripts, and human-triggered automation. One API, one audit trail, one place to enforce “who can do what.”
If you’re deploying AI agents that can take high-risk actions, you need a gate. Not optional—necessary.