Why the governance layer for AI agents must operate below the application — at the infrastructure level.
The Structural Problem
Prompt-level restrictions tell the model what not to do. But when an AI agent is jailbroken, confused, or creatively operating outside its intended behavior, those instructions disappear. The agent has no awareness of budget constraints, delegation boundaries, or data classification policies. It sees tokens, not governance.
This isn't a criticism of any specific product. It's a structural limitation of application-layer governance. Autonomous agents need constraints that operate at a layer they cannot control — the network layer. The same way firewalls don't ask packets for permission, governance infrastructure shouldn't ask agents to comply.
The Regulatory Moment
Article 14 of the EU AI Act requires demonstrable human oversight for high-risk AI systems. Organizations deploying autonomous agents that can't demonstrate enforcement-grade oversight — not just monitoring, not just logging, but actual enforcement with machine-readable decision records — face compliance exposure.
Altrace produces tamper-evident audit records for every governance decision. Every delegation contract is cryptographically signed. Every kill switch activation is logged with causal context and machine-readable reason codes. This makes compliance provable, not just claimable.
The Category Difference
Monitoring tells you what went wrong. Altrace prevents it.
How We're Different
Application Layer
Instructions to the model. Vulnerable to jailbreaking, prompt injection, and agent confusion. Not auditable as enforcement because the model chose to comply — it wasn't forced to.
Altrace
In Kubernetes, enforcement happens at the network level. The agent's request is evaluated before it reaches the LLM. If the governance chain blocks it, the request never arrives. The agent's prompt is irrelevant.
Application Layer
Governs which tools an agent calls. But the agent can still reach the LLM directly, and tool execution happens outside the governance boundary. Permissions are checked, but execution is ungoverned.
Altrace
Governs whether the agent can reach the LLM at all. In Kubernetes, there is no route around the governance proxy. Budget, model access, tool permissions, and delegation authority are all enforced before the request reaches the provider.
Application Layer
Observes agent behavior and alerts when something looks wrong. By the time a human responds, the damage — overspend, data exposure, unauthorized model access — has already happened.
Altrace
Governance rules are enforced automatically on every request. Graduated 5-level enforcement escalates from warnings to full kill. Operators receive structured alerts and can override — but enforcement doesn't wait for them.
Request early access and see enforcement-grade governance in action.