spectra

Runtime Behavioral Anomaly Detection for AI Agents

Who watches the watchers?

---

At a Glance

• Behavioral profiling from historical agent traces
• Runtime anomaly detection for tools, sequences, volume, content, and injection
• Response policies spanning log, alert, quarantine, and block
• Integrations for OpenTelemetry, LangGraph, MCP, Slack, webhooks, and PagerDuty

The Problem

AI agents are being deployed into production at an accelerating rate. But there is a critical blind spot: nobody is monitoring what these agents actually do.

Traditional monitoring (Datadog, New Relic, PagerDuty) tracks infrastructure metrics -- CPU, memory, latency, error rates. An agent can be running perfectly fine on those metrics while doing something catastrophically wrong:

• Making unusual tool calls it has never made before
• Accessing data it shouldn't need for the current task
• Taking 50 actions when similar tasks usually take 10
• Producing structurally different outputs from its historical norm
• Being manipulated by indirect prompt injection -- invisible to infra monitoring

The Solution

spectra is a lightweight observability layer that attaches to any AI agent runtime, learns normal behavioral patterns, and flags anomalies in real-time. It is security monitoring for the agent era.

Showcase

Detector breakdown from the offline anomaly demo: unseen tools, novel sequences, and volume spikes are surfaced independently.

Quick Start

Installation

pip install spectra-ai

Train a Behavioral Profile

from spectra import Monitor, Profile
from spectra.profiler import ProfileTrainer

# Train from historical execution traces
trainer = ProfileTrainer(min_traces=100)
profile = trainer.train(
    agent_type="customer-support",
    traces=historical_traces,
)

# Save for later
profile.save("customer_support_profile.json")

Monitor an Agent

from spectra import Monitor

profile = Profile.load("customer_support_profile.json")
monitor = Monitor(
    profile=profile,
    sensitivity="medium",
    response_policy={
        "CRITICAL": "block",
        "HIGH": "quarantine",
        "MEDIUM": "alert",
        "LOW": "log",
    },
)
monitor.start()

# Analyze a trace
events = await monitor.analyze(agent_trace)
for event in events:
    print(f"[{event.severity.value}] {event.title} (score={event.score:.2f})")

Instrument Your Agent

import spectra

@spectra.trace(agent_type="customer-support")
async def handle_request(user_message: str) -> str:
    # Your agent code -- spectra captures tool calls and LLM usage
    spectra.record_tool_call(tool_name="search_kb", arguments={"q": user_message})
    spectra.record_llm_call(model="gpt-4", total_tokens=1500)
    return "Response"

Architecture

graph TD
    A[Agent Runtime] -->|traces| B[Instrumentation Layer]
    B -->|AgentTrace| C[Behavioral Profiler]
    C -->|BehavioralProfile| D[Anomaly Detection Engine]
    D -->|AnomalyEvent| E[Response Engine]

    E -->|log| F[Logger]
    E -->|alert| G[Slack / Webhook]
    E -->|quarantine| H[Human Review]
    E -->|block| I[Task Terminated]

    subgraph Detectors
        D1[Tool Anomaly]
        D2[Sequence Anomaly]
        D3[Volume Anomaly]
        D4[Content Anomaly]
        D5[Injection Detection]
    end

    D --- D1 & D2 & D3 & D4 & D5

Anomaly Detectors

1. Tool Usage Anomaly

Flags when an agent calls tools outside its normal repertoire.

• Never-seen tools: tool not observed in any training trace (CRITICAL)
• Frequency anomaly: tool called far more/less than normal
• Argument anomaly: unusual argument patterns

2. Action Sequence Anomaly

Builds a Markov model of normal action sequences and flags deviations.

• Novel transitions: action sequence never seen in training
• Low-probability sequences: statistically improbable chains
• Loop detection: agent stuck repeating the same action

3. Volume / Duration Anomaly

Z-score statistical analysis on execution metrics.

• LLM call count, tool call count, total tokens, wall-clock duration
• Configurable sensitivity: low, medium, high, paranoid

4. Content Anomaly

Detects structural changes in agent output.

• Unexpected code blocks, URLs, or structured data
• Dramatic output length changes

5. Prompt Injection Detection

Behavioral analysis for indirect prompt injection.

• Detects behavioral shifts after external content ingestion
• Flags the effect of injection, not just the input
• Correlates novel tool usage with preceding tool results

Sensitivity Levels

Level	Z-Score Threshold	Use Case
low	4.0	Production -- minimize false positives
medium	3.0	Balanced monitoring (default)
high	2.0	Elevated security posture
paranoid	1.5	Maximum detection -- expect more alerts

Alerting

from spectra import Monitor, SlackWebhook, WebhookChannel

monitor = Monitor(
    profile=profile,
    alert_channels=[
        SlackWebhook("https://hooks.slack.com/services/..."),
        WebhookChannel("https://your-api.com/alerts"),
    ],
)

Integrations

OpenTelemetry

from spectra.instrumentation import OTelCollector

collector = OTelCollector(service_name="my-agent")
collector.export_trace(agent_trace)
collector.export_anomaly(anomaly_event)

LangGraph

from spectra.instrumentation.langgraph import LangGraphCallback

callback = LangGraphCallback(agent_type="research-agent")
callback.on_tool_start("search", {"query": "test"})
callback.on_tool_end("search", result="Found results")

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

from spectra.instrumentation.mcp import MCPMiddleware

middleware = MCPMiddleware(agent_type="assistant")

@middleware.wrap_tool("file_search")
async def file_search(query: str) -> str:
    ...

CLI

# Train a profile
spectra train traces.json --agent-type customer-support --output profile.json

# Inspect a profile
spectra inspect profile.json

# Launch the dashboard
spectra dashboard profile.json --port 8400

Project Structure

src/spectra/
    __init__.py              # Public API
    models.py                # Pydantic data models
    exceptions.py            # Custom exceptions
    monitor.py               # Main monitoring runtime
    cli.py                   # CLI interface
    instrumentation/
        decorator.py         # @spectra.trace decorator
        otel.py              # OpenTelemetry integration
        mcp.py               # MCP middleware
        langgraph.py         # LangGraph callback
    profiler/
        profile.py           # Behavioral profile
        trainer.py           # Profile training
        markov.py            # Markov chain model
    detectors/
        tool_anomaly.py      # Tool usage detector
        sequence_anomaly.py  # Action sequence detector
        volume_anomaly.py    # Volume/duration detector
        content_anomaly.py   # Content analysis detector
        injection.py         # Prompt injection detector
    response/
        policy.py            # Response policy engine
        alerter.py           # Alert channels
        blocker.py           # Task blocking/quarantine
    dashboard/
        app.py               # FastAPI dashboard

Demo

Run the offline walkthrough with:

uv run python examples/demo.py

For LangGraph, MCP, and custom-agent instrumentation flows, see examples/.

Development

# Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/sushaan-k/spectra.git
cd spectra
pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Run tests
pytest tests/ -v

# Lint and format
ruff check src/ tests/
ruff format src/ tests/

# Type check
mypy src/spectra/

Why spectra?

1. New category -- behavioral monitoring for AI agents does not exist as a product
2. Learns, not rules -- adapts to each agent type from real execution data
3. Detects injection by effect -- catches prompt injection via behavioral shift, not input scanning
4. Security + observability -- bridges the gap between security monitoring and agent ops
5. Production integrations -- OpenTelemetry, Slack, LangGraph, MCP out of the box

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please open an issue first to discuss what you'd like to change.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feat/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'feat: add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feat/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Please ensure tests pass and code is formatted with ruff format before submitting.

License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.