> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.agentsentinel.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Policies

> Budgets, allow/deny lists, rate limits, and remote policy sync.

Agent Sentinel policies give you a **kill switch** for unsafe actions and a **cost control plane** for your agent. Policies are enforced by the SDK **before** the decorated function executes.

## What policies can do

* **Budgets** — session, run, or per-action USD caps
* **Allow/Deny lists** — block named actions, or allowlist a closed set
* **Rate limits** — per-action `max_count` per `window_seconds`
* **Approvals** — require human approval by action name, tag, risk level, or USD threshold
* **Guardrails (Phase 7)** — built-in PII detection, content moderation, loop protection, idempotency replay
* **Evidence graph** — `evidence_requirements`, `commit_actions`, `evidence_actions` — enforce that commit actions only run after prerequisite reads
* **Grounding rules** — field-level constraints (`commit_action.amount` must equal `lookup_action.amount`)
* **Argument constraints** — JSON Schema applied to action kwargs before execution
* **Kill switch** — emergency org-scoped halt for an `agent`, `run`, or `mission`

If a policy is violated, the SDK raises:

* `BudgetExceededError`
* `PolicyViolationError`

## Authoring formats

Policies can be authored in any of:

* **Code** — `PolicyEngine.configure(...)` in the SDK
* **YAML / JSON** — `callguard.yaml` (SDK) or `POST /api/v1/policies/compile` (platform)
* **Plain English** — paste prose into the console editor; the platform routes it through `gemini-2.5-flash` (`POST /api/v1/policies/compile` with `source_format: prose`) to lower it into the policy IR. The same Pydantic validator runs over the LLM output, so a hallucinated field cannot produce an invalid policy.

See: <a href="/sdk/python/policies">SDK policies</a>, <a href="/sdk/python/prose-policies">prose policies</a>, <a href="/sdk/python/guardrails">guardrails</a>.

## Versioning

Every successful update on the platform creates an immutable `PolicyVersion` snapshot — full diff history, author/reviewer attribution, and one-click rollback. Rollback itself writes a new version, so the audit trail is preserved.

## Remote policy sync (platform)

If you enable remote policy sync, the SDK downloads policies from:

```text theme={null}
GET /api/v1/policies/sync?agent_id=...&run_id=...
```

The platform returns policies by scope:

* **global** (`scope="global"`)
* **agent** (`scope="agent"`, `target_id=<agent_id>`)
* **run** (`scope="run"`, `target_id=<run_id>`)

The SDK merges them in order (global → agent → run) and applies the **most restrictive** settings for budgets and limits.