Architecture Overview

AEGIS separates AI reasoning from operational execution through a governance mediation layer. This page provides a high-level view of the system architecture and how components interact.

Architectural Model

AI Agent
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   v
AEGIS Governance Gateway
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   v
Decision Engine
 +- Capability Authorization
 +- Authority Verification
 +- Risk Evaluation
 +- Policy Enforcement
   |
   v
Tool Proxy Layer
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   v
External Systems

This architecture ensures that incorrect reasoning or adversarial manipulation cannot directly produce unsafe operational outcomes. The AI system never interacts with external infrastructure directly — every action passes through the governance gateway first.

Key Components

Governance Gateway

The entry point for all action proposals. The gateway receives AGP-1 protocol messages from AI systems, authenticates the requesting actor, and routes proposals to the decision engine.

Decision Engine

The core evaluation pipeline that determines whether an action should be allowed. It runs four checks in sequence:

1. Capability Authorization — Is the requested capability registered in the system? Does the actor have a grant for it?
2. Authority Verification — Does the actor have the required authority level for this capability in this context?
3. Risk Evaluation — Does the computed risk score fall within acceptable thresholds?
4. Policy Enforcement — Do active policies permit this action given the full context?

If any check fails, the action is denied or escalated. All checks must pass for an ALLOW decision.

Tool Proxy Layer

For approved actions, the tool proxy layer handles execution against external systems. It provides:

• Execution isolation (the AI system never has direct access)
• Result capture and reporting back through AGP-1
• Timeout and circuit-breaker protections

Audit Subsystem

Every governance decision — whether allowed, denied, or escalated — is persisted to an immutable, hash-chained audit log. The audit subsystem operates independently to ensure that governance failures do not compromise the audit trail.

Platform Components

The AEGIS ecosystem is distributed across several repositories, each with a distinct responsibility:

Design Principles

The architecture is grounded in several non-negotiable principles:

• Deterministic governance — Identical requests with identical policies always produce identical decisions
• Default-deny — Absence of explicit authorization yields denial
• Complete attribution — Every request includes authenticated actor identity
• Immutable audit — Every decision is persisted permanently and cannot be modified
• Fail-closed semantics — All subsystem failures result in denial or escalation, never implicit allow

For detailed exploration of each principle, see the AGP-1 Protocol Overview.

Next Steps

• System Design — Detailed component design and interactions
• Security Model — Threat model and security architecture
• Data Flow — AGP-1 protocol flow and message lifecycle