Important Agent Contracts are available in private preview. Details in this topic are based on pre-release designs and an early build, and are subject to change before general availability.
The Contract tab on AI Agent asset pages shows the combined set of rules currently governing that agent, drawn from the global agent contract and any additional, specialized Agent Contract assets related to it, and lets you apply the latest rules so that Guardian uses them.
For a view across every Agent Contract asset in your environment, go to the Agent contracts page.
Contract tab components
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| Guardian stats | A three-card row showing Number of Guardian invocations, Issues, and Guardian pass rate for this agent, each over the last 30 days.TBC - confirm exactly what counts as a Guardian invocation, and whether the 30-day window is configurable. |
| Combined contract | The full set of rules currently applying to this agent, combined from the global agent contract and any specialized agent contracts related to it. A toggle switches between a plain-language rules view and the compiled YAML of the agent's enforcement bundle, the machine-checkable form of those rules that Guardian actually evaluates. In the rules view, the rules are numbered and grouped under a heading for the Agent Contract they come from, for example the global agent contract. |
| Contract status |
An Apply latest rules button compiles the agent's rules so that Guardian uses the latest Agent Contract updates.
TBC - the compilation job has the states pending, running, completed, and failed, but the status badges and labels shown on this tab weren't found in the code. Confirm what the tab shows for each state. |
| Contract structure | Summarizes how many rules the agent follows and how many Agent Contracts they're combined from, for example "This agent follows 11 rules combined from 1 contract". Below the summary, it lists each Agent Contract contributing rules to this agent, for example the global agent contract plus any specialized agent contracts related to it, along with the number of rules each one contributes. |
How rules are combined
Guardian merges the rules of the global and specialized Agent Contracts when it compiles them. If two rules conflict:
- A rule in the global Agent Contract takes precedence over a rule in a specialized one that it fully covers, even if the global rule is less strict.
- Among rules in Agent Contracts at the same level, the stricter response wins: Deny over Escalate, and Escalate over Flag.
- Two Deny rules never conflict, and a Rewrite rule never conflicts with another verdict. Both are applied.
- If the winning rule only partly covers the other one, both are applied, and the overlap is reported as a conflict for a steward to review.
A rule that is dropped because another rule takes precedence isn't enforced.
Rules that Guardian can't enforce
The text of a rule isn't checked when you save it. When Guardian compiles the rules, it works out for each rule whether it can enforce it. A rule isn't enforced, or is only partly enforced, in the following cases:
- The rule is too vague, for example because it doesn't state a threshold. Guardian doesn't guess.
- Guardian can't tie the rule to the agent's actual tools or data.
- The rule needs something that the rule language can't express.
- Another rule takes precedence over it.
Some rules need no enforcement. Rules that only allow something, and rules that don't apply to this agent, don't produce an enforcement check. A rule that can't be enforced never stops the other rules from being compiled and enforced.
Note TBC - the compilation report that records the outcome for each rule, and any conflicts, isn't shown in the product yet (Groundwork, 2026-10-22). Confirm with dev if and where a user can see which rules weren't enforced, and update this section.
- Learn more about the Agent Contract model.
- Learn more about Guardian Agent runtime enforcement.
- Create or update an Agent Contract.