Two Levels of Control
ArgentOS gives you control over your agent’s behavior at two levels, depending on your needs:| Safety Rules (Core) | Intent Governance (Business) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it’s for | Everyone | Teams, MSPs, enterprise |
| What it does | Set basic boundaries — what your agent should never do, and what needs your approval | Full three-tier policy hierarchy with departments, monotonic inheritance, simulation gates, and industry packs |
| Where to find it | Dashboard > Settings > Safety Rules | Dashboard > Settings > Advanced Governance Console |
| Complexity | 3 settings + 2 lists | Full policy engine with 20+ configurable fields |
Safety Rules (Core)
Available to all ArgentOS users. Set basic guardrails for your agent in under a minute. Read the Safety Rules guide Three controls:- Cautiousness level — How careful should your agent be? (Relaxed, Balanced, Strict)
- Never do — Actions that are always blocked, regardless of context
- Requires approval — Actions where your agent will ask before proceeding
Intent Governance (Business)
For teams running multiple agents across departments with compliance requirements. Read the Governance guide Full hierarchical policy engine:- Global > Department > Agent inheritance (children can only tighten, never loosen)
- Monotonic rules — neverDo is additive, allowedActions is subset-only, escalation thresholds get stricter
- Simulation gates — Test agent behavior before deployment
- Industry packs — Pre-built configurations for law, medical, financial, MSP, and more
- Department templates — Support, Engineering, MSP Ops, Research
How They Relate
Safety Rules writesenabled, runtimeMode, globalPolicy.neverDo, and globalPolicy.requiresHumanApproval. The Governance Console exposes the full hierarchy. Both read and write the same intent config block.