agt-policies (5.0.0a1)

Agent Control Specification, or ACS, is the AGT policy engine. It is a stateless, deterministic, fail-closed policy decision runtime for agent security. A host acts as the policy enforcement point, calls ACS at defined intervention points with a complete snapshot, receives a normalized verdict, and enforces that verdict before the agent action proceeds.

ACS gives AGT one portable contract for policy decisions across the agent lifecycle. Instead of scattering governance through prompts, framework callbacks, and application-specific checks, hosts submit the same manifest and snapshot shape at each point in the loop.

Input -> Model -> Tool Call -> Tool Result -> Output

ACS covers the full agent loop: input, model calls, tool calls, tool results, output, startup, and shutdown. A manifest declares which policy runs at each intervention point, what part of the snapshot is the policy target, which tool metadata is projected, and which annotators contribute additional context.

agt-policies is the Python package that exposes ACS to AGT hosts and adapters. Use it when host code needs to:

• discover, scope, merge, and materialize AGT governance manifests
• build complete AGT snapshots for ACS intervention points
• call the ACS Python SDK through AgtRuntime
• enforce allow, warn, deny, escalate, and transform verdicts
• preserve v4 Agent OS adapter behavior while routing through ACS

The native runtime evaluates; this package prepares the AGT host context and turns the returned decision into the Python objects that AGT adapters enforce.

How ACS and agt-policies fit together

What is here

• agt.manifest_resolution — folder discovery + scope filtering + rule merge layer that runs in the host before the engine sees a manifest. Implements spec/agt/AGT-RESOLUTION-1.0.md. (discover, scope, merge, build.)
• agt.policies.snapshot — snapshot builder per spec/agt/AGT-SNAPSHOT-1.0.md.
• agt.policies.bridge — renders a v4 GovernancePolicy into an ACS manifest + OPA rego module.
• agt.policies.result — EvaluationResult (replaces v4 PolicyCheckResult).
• agt.policies.runtime — Python wrapper over the ACS Python SDK that loads a resolved manifest, runs intervention points, applies the transform verdict, enforces approval, and emits AGT telemetry events.

Runtime flow

1. The host identifies the intervention point, such as input or pre_tool_call.
2. SnapshotBuilder creates the complete AGT snapshot for that call, including the agent/session envelope and current budget counters.
3. AgtRuntime resolves the manifest when needed, sanitizes AGT-only fields for the native engine, and calls the ACS Python SDK.
4. The returned ACS verdict is mapped to EvaluationResult, including verdict, reason, optional transform, optional evidence, and the input_identity / enforced_identity audit fields.
5. The host enforces the result. allow, warn, and transform proceed; deny blocks; escalate routes through the configured approval resolver or fails closed.

Compatibility bridge

Existing Agent OS adapters still accept the v4 GovernancePolicy dataclass. agt.policies.bridge renders that policy into an ACS manifest plus a generated Rego bundle. The bridge preserves v4 semantics where they differ from the native ACS defaults, including an empty allowed_tools list meaning no allowlist and max_tool_calls=0 meaning deny every tool call.

The generated compatibility policy is identified as agt_legacy_rules inside the resolved ACS manifest. If merged governance rules are present but no intervention point binds to agt_legacy_rules, resolution fails closed rather than producing rules that never run.

Security invariants

The host layer is fail-closed by design. Notably: governance files that resolve outside the workspace root are rejected; directory-style scopes (dir/) cover their subtree; a parent deny cannot be neutralised by a child allow whose condition overlaps it; malformed budget counters and approval-resolver timeouts deny rather than silently allow.

Resolved Rego bundles are materialized outside the governed workspace for runtime use and cleaned up when the runtime closes. This prevents a workspace-writable policy bundle from being overwritten between resolution and evaluation.

Install (development)

cd agent-governance-python/agt-policies
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

Tests that exercise agt.policies.runtime require the native ACS Python SDK from policy-engine/sdk/python. In a repository checkout, build it first:

cd ../../policy-engine
pip install ./sdk/python

OPA-backed Rego evaluations also require opa on PATH or ACS_OPA_PATH pointing at an OPA executable.