sentience-governor 0.2.3

Open-tier governance wrapper for enterprise AI agents

sentience-governor

See exactly what your AI agents did, why they did it, and where they crossed boundaries — in real time.

Install → run → see your first trace in under 2 minutes.

sentience-governor is the open-tier governance wrapper for AI agents. It intercepts agent tool calls at the execution boundary, evaluates them against a default policy set, and produces a structured local trace.

It does this without modifying agent behavior, without blocking execution, and without sending anything anywhere automatically.

Status: v0.2.3. Apache 2.0 licensed. Runtime + Sentience Sync CLI + live production sync endpoint at https://sync.getsentience.ai/v1. Optional per-turn LLM-token attribution on traces. Full test suite (474 tests) + golden-trace coverage + per-commit acceptance gate against live prod.

Simple mental model

Session = one run of an agent Event = one action inside a session Trace = all events in a session

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What it does

• Captures agent tool calls at the execution boundary
• Emits structured governance events
• Evaluates each event against five default policy rules
• Produces local traces you can inspect
• Shows what the paid control plane would have done, without blocking anything

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What it does not do

• Does not block or modify agent execution in the open tier
• Does not send telemetry, licensing checks, or data automatically
• Does not persist data across sessions
• Does not require a Sentience account, API key, or network connection
• Does not classify data unless classification is provided by the integration

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Install

pipx install sentience-governor
sentience --help

That's the install. Two commands. Registers four CLIs on your $PATH: sentience, sentience-cli, sentience-sync, sentience-claude-code-hook.

Verify install:

pipx list

Upgrade:

pipx upgrade sentience-governor

Uninstall:

pipx uninstall sentience-governor

If you don't have pipx: brew install pipx (macOS) or python3 -m pip install --user pipx (Linux/WSL), then pipx ensurepath and restart your shell.

Library integration: if you're importing sentience_governor as a Python module inside your own project (MCP wrapper, LangChain callback, custom agent runtime), use pip install sentience-governor inside your project's virtualenv. The pipx path above is for CLI usage; pip-in-venv is for library usage.

Requires Python 3.10+. No account. No signup. No API key.

Want to know when the hosted dashboard ships? Drop your email at https://getsentience.ai/launch-list — or just install and we'll ask politely on first run. Optional, easy to skip, never re-asks.

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Start here: first trace

If you use Claude Code, this is the fastest path.

1. Install:

   pipx install sentience-governor
   

2. Add the Claude Code hook config shown in the Quickstart (Claude Code hook) section below.

3. Run Claude Code normally.

4. Review the latest trace:

   sentience open --latest --summary
   

You should see:

• A session listed
• Events captured
• A summary explaining what happened

If you see nothing, run:

sentience status
sentience list

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Commands

Most used commands

sentience open --latest --summary   # see what happened
sentience list                      # see recent sessions
sentience status                    # confirm the hook is capturing
sentience-sync run                  # optional: upload aggregated counts

Installing the package registers four CLI entry points. Skim this table before reading further; pick the one that matches what you're doing.

Command	Use it when…	Details
sentience	reviewing an agent-hook session trace (Claude Code today; more coming). Curated, signal-first output.	sentience status / sentience list / sentience open [--latest | <id>] [--summary]
sentience-cli	inspecting a library trace (MCP wrapper / LangChain handler) or a golden-trace fixture. Raw, full-fidelity.	sentience-cli <file> / my-agent | sentience-cli
sentience-claude-code-hook	invoked by Claude Code via .claude/settings.json. Not run directly by operators.	Reads JSON on stdin, emits governance events, exits 0.
sentience-sync	opting in to send aggregated rule-fire counts to Sentience Cloud. Manual, explicit, one run at a time — never automatic. Requires --email and --name on first register.	sentience-sync init / register --email ... --name ... / run / status / update-check

sentience subcommands (agent-hook viewer):

Subcommand	What it does
sentience status	Is the hook capturing sessions? Prints the trace path and last session.
sentience list	One line per session, newest first, max 20.
sentience open --latest	Full curated render of the most recent session (Summary / Focus / Notes / Key Events / Full Trace / Footer).
sentience open --latest --summary	Same render, minus the Full Trace block — fits one terminal screen.
sentience open <session_id>	Render a specific session by id or prefix.

Two-CLI discipline: sentience-cli and sentience exist on purpose. They serve different audiences (library integrators vs agent-hook operators) with different trace shapes (10–50 events vs hundreds).

---

Quickstart (Claude Code hook)

If you're using Claude Code, governance is a four-line settings block — no code changes. Drop this into .claude/settings.json (project-local) or ~/.claude/settings.json (user-global):

{
  "hooks": {
    "PreToolUse": [
      {"matcher": "", "hooks": [{"type": "command", "command": "sentience-claude-code-hook"}]}
    ],
    "PostToolUse": [
      {"matcher": "", "hooks": [{"type": "command", "command": "sentience-claude-code-hook"}]}
    ]
  }
}

Every Claude Code tool call now emits a governance event. Per-session traces land at ~/.sentience/traces/claude-code/<session_id>.jsonl by default. Fail-open, observe-only, no credentials.

Known blind spot: Bash commands are captured at the tool-call boundary but the shell command string itself is not parsed (the hook sees Bash(cmd='...'), not what the shell ultimately resolves).

Review what Claude Code actually did with the curated sentience CLI:

sentience status                    # did the hook fire? yes / no
sentience list                      # what sessions exist
sentience open --latest --summary   # curated view of the latest session, one screen

This is the main first-value path for operators.

---

Quickstart (MCP client wrapper)

wrap_mcp_client() targets an internal MCPClientLike protocol. To wrap a concrete MCP SDK client, adapt it through SentienceMCPAdapter — the adapter keeps the wrapper free of any SDK-specific method names.

from sentience_governor.cache.cache import InProcessCache
from sentience_governor.session_manager.manager import SessionManager
from sentience_governor.sink.writer import SinkWriter, StdoutSink
from sentience_governor.wrapper.mcp import (
    SentienceMCPAdapter,
    wrap_mcp_client,
)

# Shared per-process collaborators.
session_manager = SessionManager()
cache = InProcessCache()
sink = SinkWriter(StdoutSink())

# Adapt your SDK client to the MCPClientLike protocol.
# `call_fn(delegate, tool_name, arguments) -> dict` is the only SDK-aware bit.
adapted = SentienceMCPAdapter(
    delegate=your_sdk_client,
    call_fn=lambda client, name, args: client.call_tool(name, args),
)

wrapped = wrap_mcp_client(
    target=adapted,
    session_manager=session_manager,
    cache=cache,
    sink_writer=sink,
    agent_id="my-agent",
    agent_version="1.0.0",
    vendor_id="my-company",
    declared_capabilities=["crm.read"],
    owner_claim="user_123",
    stated_objective="Generate Q1 customer report",
)

async with wrapped:
    result = wrapped.send_tool_call("crm.get_customer", {"id": "123"})

Integration consists of three steps: import Sentience, assemble the collaborators, wrap the client.

---

Quickstart (LangChain-based agent)

Attach SentienceCallbackHandler as a callback. It duck-types the LangChain BaseCallbackHandler interface, so no hard dependency on langchain-core at import time.

from sentience_governor.cache.cache import InProcessCache
from sentience_governor.session_manager.manager import SessionManager
from sentience_governor.sink.writer import SinkWriter, StdoutSink
from sentience_governor.wrapper.langchain_adapter import SentienceCallbackHandler

session_manager = SessionManager()
cache = InProcessCache()
sink = SinkWriter(StdoutSink())

handler = SentienceCallbackHandler(
    agent_id="my-agent",
    session_manager=session_manager,
    cache=cache,
    sink_writer=sink,
    agent_version="1.0.0",
    declared_capabilities=["crm.read"],
    owner_claim="user_123",
)

agent.invoke(
    {"input": "Generate Q1 customer report"},
    config={"callbacks": [handler]},
)

If you are building with create_react_agent and prefer the middleware integration path, SentienceMiddleware wraps the same handler and plugs in via the middleware= keyword. It is observe-only in v0 — it never blocks.

from sentience_governor.wrapper.langchain_adapter import SentienceMiddleware

middleware = SentienceMiddleware(handler)
agent = create_react_agent(llm=llm, tools=tools, prompt=prompt, middleware=[middleware])

Token tracking (optional, v0.2.3+). SentienceCallbackHandler.on_llm_start and on_llm_end capture per-turn LLM token usage from LangChain responses automatically and attach it to subsequent tool-call events with a per-turn llm_turn_id so multi-tool-call attribution stays mathematically correct. LangGraph users can additionally register SentienceMiddleware.awrap_step for step-level aggregation. See userdocs/sentience_governor.md "Token tracking (optional)" for the full integration guide, per-provider cache-token semantics, and the aggregation contract.

---

Control points

sentience-governor wraps your agent's execution boundary and emits structured governance events at five control points:

• AGENT_REGISTERED — who is acting
• INTENT_DECLARED — what they are trying to do
• SCOPE_ASSERTED — what tool they are calling and why
• CONTEXT_SNAPSHOT — what data is in their context
• MEMORY_WRITE_ATTEMPT — what they are trying to persist

A sixth event type, GOVERNANCE_ERROR, is emitted by the runtime itself when an internal fault occurs (sink unavailable, schema violation, intercept failure, timeout). It is always routed to stdout regardless of the configured sink, and never interrupts the agent.

---

View your trace

For Claude Code sessions:

sentience open --latest --summary

For raw library traces:

sentience-cli path/to/agent.jsonl

Use sentience for high-volume agent-hook sessions. Use sentience-cli for full-fidelity library traces.

---

Default policy rules

Rule	What it checks
POL-001	Agent must declare intent before executing mutating operations
POL-002	Agents must be registered before accessing tools
POL-003	Data entering context must be classified
POL-004	Memory writes must carry classification and retention policy
POL-005	Sensitive data must not escalate in context without explicit authorization

All five rules are evaluated on every session. Violations are surfaced and simulated — never enforced in the open tier.

---

Sinks

Three sinks are shipped. Pick one at construction time and pass it to SinkWriter.

Sink	Use
StdoutSink	Default. One JSON object per line to stdout. Pipe into sentience-cli.
FileSink	Append newline-delimited JSON to a file path.
HttpLocalSink	POST each event as JSON to a local URL. 500 ms timeout, no retry. Loopback only.

Failure semantics are uniform across sinks:

• Writes are synchronous, unbuffered, and never retried.
• On failure, the event is dropped and a GOVERNANCE_ERROR is routed to stdout.
• Severity escalates per session: 1 failure → warning, 3 consecutive → degraded, remainder of the session → critical on close.
• The agent is never blocked.

---

Sentience Sync

Optional. Manual. Sends only aggregated counts — never raw events, tool arguments, tool responses, or payloads.

Sentience Sync is the opt-in feedback channel between your installation and Sentience Cloud. It is how both sides learn:

• For you (the operator): is my policy working? are my agents actually hitting the rules I care about? is my installation running the version I think it is?
• For Sentience (the maintainer): which policies fire in the wild, at what frequency, across which runtime versions? Signals that inform the next release.

It is completely opt-in. Installing the runtime sends nothing. Wrapping an agent sends nothing. Events land in local trace files on your machine only. Sync transmits anything to Sentience Cloud only when you explicitly run sentience-sync register and then sentience-sync run.

Why it exists

Sync gives operators a lightweight roll-up of policy activity and update notices for their installed runtime version. It also gives maintainers aggregate signal about which rules fire in real deployments.

It never auto-applies updates and never changes runtime behavior.

What Sentience Cloud sees

Every sentience-sync run POST contains only:

• installation_id
• runtime_version
• window_start / window_end
• counts_by_rule

Sentience Cloud never sees raw event content, agent IDs, user IDs, tool names, arguments, responses, payloads, source code, logs, or business context.

Registration additionally collects email and name because Sync is the update/support channel. organization and operator_role are optional.

Safety

Built for unattended runs. Failure is safe.

• No state advancement on failed uploads — failed runs retry from the same offset, no data loss.
• Logs are always the source of truth.
• Duplicate runs are idempotent (server returns duplicate=true, CLI exits 0).

CLI

sentience-sync init
sentience-sync register --email [e-mail] --name "Your Name"
sentience-sync run            # default
sentience-sync status
sentience-sync aggregate
sentience-sync update-check

Exit codes: 0 success · 1 config · 2 network · 3 not registered · 4 server · 5 state.

Config

{
  "endpoint": "https://sync.getsentience.ai/v1",
  "log_sources": ["/var/log/sentience/agent.jsonl"],
  "report_geo": false
}

Precedence: CLI > env > file > defaults.

The default endpoint is live. Use SENTIENCE_SYNC_ENDPOINT or the endpoint field in your config to point at a different target.

Boundary

• Runtime has zero dependency on Sync — enforced in tests across the codebase.
• Sync cannot influence execution or policy.
• Uninstalling Sync (deleting the sentience_sync directory) does not affect the runtime.

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Upgrade to enforcement

The open tier answers: what happened. The paid control plane adds enforcement: what should be blocked, narrowed, paused, or escalated.

Real enforcement — block, narrow, scope contraction, pause — and organisational memory across sessions and agents are paid control-plane capabilities.

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License

Apache 2.0. See https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.

Copyright 2026 Crescere Labs, Inc.

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Sentience — Crescere Labs, Inc.