The Six Pipes
Six architectural layers stacked in order of operational priority. Each layer depends on the one below it. Skip a pipe, and the stack collapses under regulatory pressure.
Identity
Constrained agent identities with narrowly scoped service accounts. No agent inherits human privileges. Every action is cryptographically attributable to a specific agent identity.
Audit
Full decision trail: input context, reasoning trace, output action, confidence score. 100% reversible. Every agent decision can be traced, reviewed, and rolled back.
Kill Switch
Real-time telemetry against safety thresholds. Velocity, cost, error rate, confidence decay, policy violations. Threshold breach triggers automatic suspension and human escalation.
Human Gate
High-stakes actions require explicit human approval. The workflow mechanically pauses. No agent can bypass the gate without a valid human authorization token.
Legacy Insulation
Isolation layers between AI agents and legacy systems. Prevents cascading failures across system boundaries. API translation layers absorb breaking changes without governance regression.
Learning Loop
Continuous improvement driven by production telemetry. Model performance, governance violations, cost trends, and confidence distributions feed back into architecture decisions.