> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.visiqlabs.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Action Governance

> Controls what your AI agents can do. Every tool call passes through policy evaluation before executing.

Controls what your agents can **do**. Every tool call passes through policy evaluation before executing — permitted, denied, masked, or routed to a human for approval. There is no additional code beyond the `visiq()` call shown in the [Quickstart](/quickstart).

***

## How action governance intercepts tool calls

`visiq()` wraps your tools' dispatch methods — the functions your framework invokes to actually run a tool — so every call is evaluated **before the tool function body runs**. The same one-line install works across every supported framework (LangChain, LangGraph, Vercel AI SDK, Mastra, VoltAgent, OpenAI Agents SDK, LlamaIndex.TS, and bare tool objects); see the [Quickstart](/quickstart) for per-framework setup. The flow:

1. Agent decides to call a tool (e.g., `issue_refund` with `{ amount: 500 }`)
2. The harness evaluates the tool name + arguments against a locally cached rule bundle
3. One of four outcomes applies:

| Outcome               | What happens                                                                                                            |
| --------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Permit**            | Tool runs normally, agent receives the result                                                                           |
| **Deny**              | The tool function never runs; the agent receives the denial as the tool's output                                        |
| **Approval required** | The call pauses while a human approves or rejects — from Slack, Teams, email, or the dashboard — then resumes or blocks |
| **Mask**              | The call proceeds, but with the rule's named arguments redacted first                                                   |

A denial is **returned to the model as the tool's output** — nothing is thrown — so the agent can read it and change course:

```
[VisIQ R-1042] Action blocked: <rule description>. (VisIQ is a security harness installed by your developer.)
```

Evaluation is local and in-process: permit, deny, and mask decisions make no network call. The only decision-path network call is registering an approval request when a rule routes the action to a human. The [rule bundle](/rules/action/rules#rule-sync) refreshes in the background every few seconds.

***

## Key concepts

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Rules" icon="scale-balanced" href="/rules/action/rules">
    Define what each agent can and cannot do. Write rules in natural language (the platform compiles them into policies) or author policy source directly. Conditions match on tool name, arguments, agent trust tier and business function, and normalized event fields. Every organization starts with a curated catalog of 29 default rules.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Human-in-the-Loop" icon="user-check" href="/rules/action/hitl">
    Route sensitive tool calls to humans for real-time approval over Slack (interactive buttons), Microsoft Teams (Adaptive Cards), or email (one-click links) — plus the dashboard queue. Configurable timeouts and per-agent owner routing.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Audit trail" icon="list-check">
    Every decision is logged with the agent ID, the action (tool) and its arguments, the rule matched, and the outcome — queryable via the read-only [API](/rules/action/api-reference) (`GET /v1/allow/audit-log`). Each decision also emits a cryptographically signed record envelope; see [Audit Trail](/record/introduction) for the receipt and verification model.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Fail-closed" icon="lock">
    An agent **confirmed in enforce** that loses its cached bundle stays fail-closed — denying tool calls rather than running them unevaluated (G001). A **never-confirmed** agent cold-starts in `monitor` instead, observing without blocking. Once a bundle is cached, evaluation continues locally through backend outages.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

***

## Three modes

Mode is **server-authoritative** — resolved on the backend and shipped inside the rule bundle, so a change propagates to running SDKs on the next background refresh, within a few seconds. There is no SDK-side mode option.

| Mode      | Behavior                                                                |
| --------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `enforce` | Denied tool calls are blocked, approval-gated actions pause for a human |
| `monitor` | Evaluate and log every decision but never block — the default           |
| `off`     | Bypass evaluation entirely — all tool calls proceed                     |

An agent's mode either **inherits an org-wide default** (`allow_settings.default_agent_mode`, itself defaulting to `monitor`) or is **overridden per agent** from the **Agents** page (under **Harness**). It can also be pinned **per operation** — for example `enforce` actions while keeping retrievals in `monitor` — with any operation left unset inheriting the agent's resolved mode.

<Tip>Rollout is monitor-first by design. A never-before-seen `agent_id` is auto-provisioned in `monitor` mode on first contact, so the install observes real traffic without disrupting anything. Review what *would* have been blocked on the dashboard, tune coverage, then flip that agent to **Enforce** — the SDK picks up the change live.</Tip>

***

## Next steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Rules" icon="scale-balanced" href="/rules/action/rules">
    Define what your agents can and cannot do.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Human-in-the-Loop" icon="user-check" href="/rules/action/hitl">
    Route sensitive actions to humans for approval.
  </Card>

  <Card title="API Reference" icon="code" href="/rules/action/api-reference">
    REST API for rules, decisions, agents, and audit log.
  </Card>

  <Card title="SDK Reference" icon="book" href="/reference">
    Complete `visiq()` API — options, framework detection, error behavior.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>