arXiv AI

CAVA: Canonical Action Verification and Attestation for Runtime Governance of Agentic AI Systems

arXiv:2607. 13716v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agentic AI systems increasingly act through heterogeneous runtimes: local coding hooks, SDK tools, browser automation, managed-agent traces, API gateways, and workflow engines.

arXiv AI
Aug 19

Runtime Governance for Agentic AI: Action-Boundary Control with Trusted Provenance and Fail-Closed Execution

The paper introduces Aegis, a runtime governance system for agentic AI that treats model outputs as action proposals and mediates them through a trusted decision layer before tool execution. Aegis evaluates proposals against active policy, resolves provenance server‑side, fails closed under uncertainty, and routes selected cases through a Senate‑style settlement process. In a sandbox evaluation across 6,300 rows, Aegis prevented all governed mock‑tool applications and risky side‑effect completions, preserving provenance and quorum evidence for all settled cases.

By Adam Mazzocchetti
arXiv AI
Sep 2

Towards Agentic Cloud Engineering: Graph and Loop Engineering with a Zero-Trust Agent Harness

The paper introduces Agentic Cloud Workflow Engineering, a framework that converts natural‑language agentic cloud‑engineering tasks into validated code repositories and verified cloud deployments. It separates graph engineering for long‑horizon workflow progression, loop engineering for bounded diagnosis and recovery, and agent harness engineering for zero‑trust execution. Experiments on Google Cloud show that executions either produce a verified deployment or an auditable terminal failure within bounded recovery limits.

By Sagar Srinivas Sakhinana, Venkataramana Runkana
arXiv AI
Sep 25

AgentKernel: The Trust-Native Agentic Operating System

AgentKernel proposes a trust‑native operating system for AI agents, arguing that current governance layers are insufficient because they share the same process trust boundary as the agents. The OS introduces a mandatory enforcement boundary organized into four pillars—Identity, Perception, Cognition, and Execution—each adapting classical OS security principles to address semantic‑level failures such as prompt injection, memory poisoning, and tool misuse. By wrapping the agent lifecycle in this structured, non‑bypassable framework, AgentKernel aims to provide a unified security layer that can enforce identity, input mediation, memory governance, and execution control across the entire agent lifecycle.

By Zhenhua Zou, Sheng Guo, Qiuyang Zhan, Lepeng Zhao, Shuo Li, Zhuotao Liu
arXiv AI
Aug 28

When Tool Outputs Become Commands: Separating Action Induction from Runtime Authorization in Tool-Augmented LLM Agents

The paper introduces SARA, a framework that separates action induction from runtime authorization in tool‑augmented LLM agents. By treating these as distinct roles, SARA uses an Action Probe to record action provenance and only authorizes tool calls that align with the user objective and past successful executions. Experiments on AgentDojo and AgentDyn show that SARA reduces action‑to‑side‑effect risk to below 0.63% while preserving task performance.

By Xiaokun Guo, Zhen Xu, Dongdong Huo, Yanqiu Zhang, Wei Wang, Qinfu Yang, Dongjin Yu, Yu Wang
arXiv AI
Sep 23

ActGov: Governing LLM Agent Actions via Policy-Constrained Validation

ActGov is a runtime enforcement framework that validates each action proposed by a large language model (LLM) agent before it interacts with external tools, ensuring that actions stay within task‑scoped authorization boundaries and comply with dynamically constructed policies. It builds policies from tool specifications, benign tasks, and failure traces, verifying updates via SMT‑based counterexample checking. In evaluations on AgentDojo and AgentDyn benchmarks, ActGov consistently reduces indirect prompt‑injection attack success while maintaining task utility, outperforming existing defenses.

By Kaiyuan Zhang, Yuke Peng, Ke Jiang, Yinqian Zhang