AI Agent Governance: A Practical Guide for Agents That Work in Production

AI agent governance establishes rules and controls to ensure accountability for autonomous agents interacting with live systems. While simple chatbots require less oversight, agents performing actions like refunds or record updates necessitate strict governance to avoid expensive incidents, such as the Air Canada chatbot error. Runtime authorization complements this by evaluating every tool call via PERMIT, HOLD, or DENY verdicts. Using a default deny approach, it ensures capability does not equal authority before executing consequences.