Where to enforce agent limits: prompt checks, scoped credentials, or an external policy layer?
Fresh_Spread_9223 · reddit · 2026-10-15
A Reddit post ranks four places to enforce what an agent may do, by trustworthiness: (1) system prompts — cheap but bypassable via injection or messy context; (2) checks inside the agent's own code — better but framework, tools and policy share one trust boundary; (3) scoped credentials — least privilege bounds worst cases (e.g. refunds under $50), though most APIs have too-coarse scopes to express fine policies; (4) a layer outside the agent intercepting every tool call with allow/deny/ask-human, which also needs network-level egress control or the agent routes around it. The author, who builds tooling for layer 4 (disclosed), observes most teams sit at layers 1–2, a few at 3, and argues layer 4 is where things converge as agent autonomy grows — at the cost of latency and another system to run.
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