arXiv AI

ChainCaps: Composition-Safe Tool-Using Agents via Monotonic Capability Attenuation

arXiv:2605. 26542v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Tool-using agents increasingly operate in open-ended deployment environments, where they compose file systems, web APIs, code interpreters, and enterprise services at runtime.

arXiv AI
Jul 7

Securing Multi-Tool AI Agent Chains With Dynamic, Real-Time Compositional Policies

arXiv:2607. 03423v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Modern AI agent implementations such as frontier coding agents chain multiple tools at runtime that create a security surface that per-tool guardrails are unable to address, as individually permitted tools can violate organizational policies when composed.

By Chris Schneider, Kriti Faujdar, Philipp Schoenegger, Ben Bariach
arXiv AI
Sep 25

Progressive Skill Discovery as Access Control for Tool-Using LLM Agents: Structural Governance through Role-Scoped Capability Delivery

The paper introduces skilder, a framework that organizes LLM agent capabilities into role‑scoped bundles of skills, tools, and instructions, with explicit limits. Agents start with a minimal role catalog, discover the roles needed for a task, and receive the associated tools only through a single MCP server, ensuring deterministic enforcement of scope. Experiments on 13 tasks with six models show that skilder’s authorization layer prevents unauthorized tool calls and parameter violations while maintaining flexibility through dynamic cross‑role capability acquisition.

By Michael Stettler, Benjamin Girardet, Jonas Canton, Nicolas Corod
arXiv AI
1d ago

PACE: Provenance-Aware Capability Enforcement for Tool-Using LLM Agents

The paper introduces PACE, a Provenance-Aware Capability Enforcement system designed to secure tool-using large language model agents by mediating every tool call before execution. PACE employs path confinement to limit influence paths and verifies effects against authenticated authority, distinguishing certified execution contracts from evaluated configurations. Experiments on eight agent‑security benchmarks show that the evaluated configuration reduces attack success in most cases while maintaining near‑native utility.

By Fengpeng Li, Qizhou Wang, Yuke Hu, Kemou Li, Jun Liu, Haiwei Wu, Jiantao Zhou, Di Wang
arXiv AI
Sep 10

Where Is the Tradeoff in Using Third-Party API Routers for Agentic Software Development?

The paper investigates how third‑party API routers, which sit between coding agents and large language model providers, can introduce a control gap by inspecting and modifying requests and responses. Through an empirical study using the SIDEL framework, the authors evaluate four levels of router‑side injection (Response Substitution, Response Append, LLM‑Polished Injection, and LLM‑Polished with Distribution Alignment Injection) across 400 curated samples and four representative coding agents. The results show that router‑side interventions significantly alter repository‑level actions and evade existing client‑side safeguards, achieving a 0% defense success rate without additional mitigations.

By Donghao Fu, Jingxin Li, Xue Jiang, Yihong Dong