Governance API

Free · self-serve · no sales call · last updated 23 July 2026

1. Quickstart

1. Create a free account (no card, no sales call) and note your organization.
2. In AI Inventory — Assets on the account page, register an asset of kind agent or mcp_server.
3. Click Activate for Control Plane on that asset — you'll get an API key, shown once. Copy it now.
4. Call POST /api/control-plane/evaluate with that key before your agent takes an action (see below).

That's the whole integration. There's no separate "developer portal" signup — the same free account that runs the Workbench issues the key.

2. Authentication

Send your key as a standard bearer token:

Authorization: Bearer agtk_<your key>
Content-Type: application/json

A few things worth knowing about how this key behaves, all verified live when this was built:

• The key is authoritative for identity. Whatever agent name you put in the request body is ignored — every logged action uses the real name you registered the asset under. You cannot spoof a different agent's identity by changing the request body.
• An unrecognized key is rejected outright (401) — it never silently falls back to anonymous/unauthenticated behavior.
• Suspending or revoking the key (from the account page, any time) makes the very next call using it return a deny decision before any policy logic runs — a real per-agent kill switch, not just a documentation-level suspension.
• Your traffic is isolated to your own organization's ledger — it never appears in the public anonymous demo ledger, and no other organization can see or act on your asset, even by guessing a valid ID.

3. Request & response

Minimal request — only tool and action_type are required:

curl -X POST https://autogovern.io/api/control-plane/evaluate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer agtk_<your key>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "action": {
      "tool": "customer-db",
      "action_type": "db_write",
      "target": "accounts/12345",
      "payload": "update billing_email to new@example.com",
      "records_affected": 1
    }
  }'

Response:

{
  "decision": "review",
  "riskScore": 42,
  "riskBand": "medium",
  "reversible": false,
  "actionLabel": "Write to a system",
  "matchedControls": [ { "id": "human_oversight", "label": "Human approval before execution", "refs": "EU AI Act Art. 14 · NIST GOVERN" } ],
  "matchedPolicies": [],
  "reasons": [ "Irreversible action on sensitive data — human approval required" ],
  "ledger": { "id": 4021, "seq": 4021, "hash": "…", "prev_hash": "…" },
  "agentIdentity": { "public_id": "ast_xxxxxxxxxxxx", "name": "customer-support-agent", "kind": "agent", "key_status": "active" }
}

4. Handling the decision

• allow — proceed with the action.
• review — hold for human approval before proceeding. Resolve it with POST /api/control-plane/action/:id/decision ({"decision":"approved"|"denied"}) using the ledger id from the response, or build your own approval queue against your organization's own ledger.
• deny — do not proceed. Check reasons[] for why (a policy match, a risk threshold, or your own key being suspended/revoked).

Every call is written to the tamper-evident, hash-chained ledger regardless of decision — see your organization's own slice of it at GET /api/auth/org/:orgId/assets/:assetId/ledger while signed in, or verify the whole chain's integrity (no per-row content, just validity) at GET /api/control-plane/verify.

5. Node & Python snippets

No published package — these are small, dependency-free, single-file wrappers you can vendor directly into your project. Copy the code below or download the file.

// see /sdk/node/autogovern.js
const { AutoGovernClient } = require('./autogovern');

const gov = new AutoGovernClient({ apiKey: process.env.AUTOGOVERN_API_KEY });

const result = await gov.evaluate({
  tool: 'customer-db',
  action_type: 'db_write',
  target: 'accounts/12345',
  payload: 'update billing_email to new@example.com',
});

if (result.decision === 'allow') {
  // proceed
} else {
  console.log('Blocked:', result.decision, result.reasons);
}

# see /sdk/python/autogovern.py
from autogovern import AutoGovernClient
import os

gov = AutoGovernClient(api_key=os.environ["AUTOGOVERN_API_KEY"])

result = gov.evaluate({
    "tool": "customer-db",
    "action_type": "db_write",
    "target": "accounts/12345",
    "payload": "update billing_email to new@example.com",
})

if result["decision"] == "allow":
    ...  # proceed
else:
    print("Blocked:", result["decision"], result["reasons"])

6. Rate limits

Authenticated calls (with a valid, active key) are limited to 300 requests/minute per key. Unauthenticated calls to the same endpoint (the public Workbench demo) stay at the original 60 requests/minute per IP — unchanged, so this doesn't affect anyone just trying the Workbench without an account. There's no separate paid tier to raise this further today; if your real usage needs more, tell us.

7. What's verified vs. what you control

• Verified by us: your key resolves to exactly the agent/MCP-server identity you registered; a suspended or revoked key is denied before policy evaluation; your ledger data is isolated from every other organization and from the public demo.
• You control: what counts as an "action" worth checking (call this before anything consequential, not just once at startup), what you do with a review decision (build your own approval UI, or use the ledger id to resolve it via the API), and whether your agent fails open or closed if this endpoint is unreachable — this API does not currently offer a managed fail-mode setting, so build that choice into your own calling code.
• This governs a single action at a time — it's not a full agent framework, and it doesn't execute anything on your behalf. It only tells you what a documented, deterministic policy engine thinks should happen next.

8. Contact

Questions, higher-volume needs, or found a bug in this API: info@autogovern.io.