Authority checks every action your AI agents take before it runs. It blocks what’s out of bounds, gets human approval when it matters and keeps proof of everything — across any model or framework.
Agent request
Checks
Allowed
mergedMerged with one-time access. Proof recorded.
The problem
Agents now merge code, change infrastructure, move data and spend money. Gartner expects 40% of enterprise apps to include task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, up from less than 5% in 2025. Gartner, 2025 (opens in a new tab)
80%
of organizations say their AI agents have already taken unintended actions, such as accessing unauthorized systems or sharing sensitive data.
SailPoint, 2025 (opens in a new tab)97%
of organizations hit by an AI-related breach lacked proper AI access controls.
IBM Cost of a Data Breach, 2025 (opens in a new tab)23%
say their AI agents have been tricked into revealing access credentials.
SailPoint, 2025 (opens in a new tab)1 in 4
enterprise breaches will be traced back to AI agent abuse by 2028.
Gartner, 2024 (opens in a new tab)2 in 5
enterprises will demote or decommission AI agents by 2027 because of governance gaps found only after production incidents.
Gartner, 2026 (opens in a new tab)82:1
machine identities for every human identity, driven by AI and cloud adoption.
CyberArk Identity Security Landscape, 2025 (opens in a new tab)Third-party research. Each figure links to its source.
What is Authority?
Authority is an independent control layer between your AI agents and the systems they act on. Before any consequential action runs, it answers one question — and keeps the proof.
“Should this agent take this exact action, right now?”
Why Authority
Most tools try to catch bad prompts or give agents broad access. Authority controls what agents actually do — no matter what they were told.
Prompt injection will get through. Authority doesn’t depend on catching it: a manipulated agent still can’t act beyond its authority.
Permission covers a specific action in a specific task — not broad, standing access to your systems.
Decisions come from your policies, never a model’s judgment. AI can suggest safer or cheaper routes, but it can’t grant permission.
Agents never hold long-lived credentials. Access exists only for the action you allowed — then it’s gone.
Every action leaves a tamper-evident record of who asked, who approved and what happened.
See what each agent costs per successful outcome, so you fund what works.
| Common approach | What it misses | With Authority |
|---|---|---|
| Prompt filters and guardrails | What it missesTry to spot bad inputs. Determined attacks get through, and nothing controls what the agent does next. | With AuthorityControls the action itself, whatever the prompt said. |
| IAM and service accounts | What it missesGrant broad, standing access with no knowledge of the task at hand. | With AuthorityGrants task-specific permission for each action — and it expires. |
| Manual review queues | What it missesSlow everything down, and approvals aren’t tied to what actually runs. | With AuthorityAsks a person only when it matters, and the approval covers that exact action. |
| Logs and observability | What it missesExplain what happened after the damage is done. | With AuthorityDecides before the action runs and proves what happened after. |
| AI cost dashboards | What it missesShow token spend, not whether the work succeeded. | With AuthorityShows the cost of each successful outcome. |
How it works
No rewrites. Authority sits between your agents and the systems they change.
Route agent actions through Authority with an SDK, MCP gateway or API proxy — in your cloud or ours.
Define what each agent may do: which tools, systems, data and spend, for which task and with which approvals.
Each consequential action is checked before it runs. Allowed actions get one-time access; risky ones wait for a person.
Every action is recorded with its approval, cost and outcome — ready for audits, reviews and better policies.
Every action gets a clear decision
01
Observe
See every agent action. Nothing is blocked.
02
Simulate
See what would have been blocked or escalated.
03
Approve
Route high-risk actions to the right people.
04
Enforce
Block what’s out of bounds, one workflow at a time.
Switch any workflow back to observe-only instantly.
What Authority stops
Authority is built for the attacks and accidents that get past model safety.
A poisoned README tells a coding agent to drop the production database.
A merge is approved, then quietly swapped for a different pull request.
A sub-agent asks for $100,000 when its parent may only spend $5,000.
The same approved payment is submitted twice.
A payment times out after it reached the bank.
A connected tool quietly gains a delete option.
A tool response points the agent at your cloud’s internal metadata service.
An AI model recommends overriding a policy.
Someone edits the audit trail after the fact.
Outcomes
Trust is now the bottleneck. Trust in fully autonomous AI agents fell from 43% to 27% in a year, even as agents could unlock up to $450 billion in value by 2028. Capgemini Research Institute, 2025 (opens in a new tab)
Security sign-off becomes reusable policy, not a review project for every agent.
Routine actions run on their own. People see only the actions that need them.
Every action already has its record. No more piecing events together from logs.
No standing credentials in agent hands, and an instant stop for any agent, tool or workflow.
Cost per successful outcome shows which agents pay off and where budget leaks.
See the agent, task, approval and impact of any action in one place.
40%+
of agentic AI projects are expected to be canceled by the end of 2027 because of escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls.
Authority addresses all three.
Who it’s for
CISO · AppSec · IAM
Contain any agent — even a compromised one.
CTO · AI platform · Developers
Ship agents without custom guardrails.
CFO · FinOps
Know what every agent costs per result.
CRO · Compliance · Internal audit
Prove what every agent did — and why.
Coding agents
Merges, deployments and CI/CD changes
Cloud operations
Infrastructure, access and network changes
Data agents
Queries and exports of sensitive data
Payments & finance
Refunds, payouts, reconciliations and purchases
Customer support
Refunds, account changes and outbound messages
Procurement & travel
Purchases within budget and policy
Built first for financial services, fintech and payments — where every agent action has to hold up to scrutiny.
Platform
Start with control. Add cost, intelligence and commerce on the same foundation.
Control every consequential agent action with clear authority, approvals, one-time access and proof.
Tie AI spend to results with budgets and cost per successful outcome.
Predict success, cost and risk before an agent acts, and suggest better routes. Your rules still decide.
Let agents buy within limits you set, with proof for every transaction.
Prove an agent’s authority to partners without sharing your internal policies.
Economics
The cheapest agent run isn’t the cheapest result. Authority tracks the full cost of each task — models, tools and people — against whether it worked.
Set spending limits per task, agent or team. Parallel sub-agents can’t overspend a shared budget.
Cost per successful outcome
Total cost ÷ successful outcomes
Same task, 100 runs each
Proof
Every action Authority handles leaves a tamper-evident record: who asked, what was approved, what ran and what it cost. Auditors can verify it without seeing your prompts or secrets.
Illustrative example.
Integrations
Keep your models, frameworks, identity provider and cloud. Authority adds the control layer between agents and the systems they change.
Python & TypeScript SDKs
Add Authority to any agent framework or custom app.
MCP gateway
Put every Model Context Protocol tool call under policy.
API proxy
Protect SaaS and cloud APIs without changing agent code.
In your VPC
Keep sensitive data and credentials inside your cloud.
Fully managed
The fastest way to start.
Your cloud
Data and credentials never leave your environment.
Dedicated
Isolated infrastructure for global and regulated organizations.
Starting with code, cloud and data workflows, and expanding with design partners.
Authority is a security and control layer for AI agents, built by Clevera. It checks every consequential action an agent wants to take before it runs, asks a person when approval is needed and keeps tamper-evident proof of what happened. It works with any model and agent framework.
Guardrails try to detect harmful prompts and outputs. Authority assumes some will get through and controls the action itself: an agent can only do what its task and your policies allow, no matter what it was told.
Identity tools establish who an agent is and give it access. Authority decides whether a specific action is allowed right now, for this task, and grants access only for that action. It works alongside your identity provider.
It doesn’t rely on spotting the injection. Even if an agent is manipulated, it can’t act outside the authority granted for its task, so the attack can’t turn into damage.
No. Your policies decide. Authority’s predictive features can suggest safer or cheaper options, but they can never grant permission or override a block.
No. Agents never receive long-lived keys. Access is granted only for an approved action and expires straight after.
Cost per successful outcome (CPSO) is the total cost of an agent workflow divided by the number of times it actually succeeded. It shows which agents deliver value, so a cheap agent that often fails doesn’t look better than one that works.
Checks are designed to add only milliseconds, and most actions never need a person. Teams start in observe-only mode, then turn on enforcement one workflow at a time — and can switch back instantly.
Yes. Authority can run inside your cloud so sensitive data and credentials stay there. Fully managed and dedicated options are also available.
Not by default. Authority records what was decided and what happened — not your raw prompts or secrets.
Authority is model- and framework-neutral. Agents connect through SDKs, an MCP gateway or an API proxy, and the same policies apply everywhere.
Security, AI platform, finance and risk teams at organizations running AI agents that can change code, infrastructure, data or money — starting with financial services, fintech and payments.
Contact us. We’ll connect one workflow in observe-only mode, show you what Authority would have blocked or escalated and agree a plan to enforce it.
Glossary
The concepts behind controlling what AI agents can do.
Get started
We’ll connect one agent workflow in observe-only mode, show you what Authority would have stopped and agree a plan to enforce it — without breaking anything.
Step 1
Observe a real workflow
Step 2
See what would be blocked or escalated
Step 3
Enforce with confidence