Argus — the security layer for all AI models

An OpenAI-compatible gateway that sits in front of any LLM — OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Gemini, Mistral, vLLM, Ollama, anything with an OpenAI-shaped endpoint — and enforces security policy before a model ever sees your data.

Every request passes through the policy engine on the way in and on the way out. Cost intelligence (tiered routing, graceful budgets, per-task attribution) rides along via tokenecon, but security is the product.

The security layer

request -> auth -> INPUT policy -> budget -> route -> model
                                              -> OUTPUT policy -> audit -> response

Pluggable detectors (each scans, the policy decides):

Policy engine: per-direction rules (in / out / both) with four actions — allow, redact, block, flag. Add an ML-based detector later by subclassing Detector; no other code changes.

Audit log: every decision recorded — timestamp, key, task, detector, action, redacted snippet. Raw PII and secrets never touch the audit trail. GET /admin/audit for compliance review.

Quickstart

pip install argus-gateway
export AIGW_MASTER_KEY="sk-admin-secret"
export OPENAI_API_KEY="..."
argus   # serves on 127.0.0.1:4000

Point any OpenAI client at it — one base_url change:

import openai
client = openai.OpenAI(api_key="<virtual-key>", base_url="http://localhost:4000/v1")

Self-hosted models sit behind the same layer:

from gateway.providers.generic import GenericProvider
# vLLM, Ollama, llama.cpp — any OpenAI-shaped endpoint

Every response carries what happened:

"gateway": {
  "provider": "openai", "tier": "small", "difficulty": 0.17,
  "cost_usd": 0.000004, "degraded": false,
  "security": {"redactions": ["pii:EMAIL"], "flags": ["prompt_injection:INSTRUCTION_OVERRIDE"]}
}

Also inside: cost intelligence

• Tiered routing — requests scored for difficulty, cheapest capable tier wins
• Graceful budgets — over budget? Falls back to the cheapest tier and flags degraded: true instead of failing (hard-stop mode available)
• Per-task attribution — X-Task-Id groups an agentic run's turns into one costed task: GET /admin/tasks/{id}

Admin API (X-Admin-Key required)

• POST /admin/keys — issue virtual keys with budgets (degrade/hard, daily/monthly)
• GET /admin/spend, GET /admin/keys/{id}/spend — spend tracking
• GET /admin/tasks/{task_id} — per-task cost breakdown
• GET /admin/audit?limit=&key_id= — security decisions

Roadmap

Streaming (SSE), Bedrock/Gemini/Mistral adapters, semantic caching, OTEL/Prometheus export, admin UI, SSO/RBAC, ML-based injection detector.

License

MIT — Karmendra Pandey.