MCP standardized tools, but who governs agents? An open-source runtime enforcer
Trout_dev · reddit · 2026-08-31
A developer argues that MCP standardized how agents call tools and A2A how they talk to each other, but nothing specifies what an agent is actually allowed to do. He open-sourced scyvera (MIT) as a runtime governance layer:
- Load a contract via ContractEnforcer.load("contract.yaml") and decorate functions with @enforcer.gate();
- Each agent declares permissions, side effects, and approval boundaries upfront; the enforcer holds it to that at runtime, raising ContractViolationError for ungated operations;
- Every allow/deny/pending decision goes to an immutable audit log;
- The spec is framework-agnostic (n8n, LangGraph, etc.).
Honest limitation: it can't stop a developer from calling an ungated function directly, which is documented.
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