The $18.42 refund timed out. Should I send it again?
Runtime Governance & Execution Control
Govern the action. Not just the conversation.
Put authorization, approvals and limits where your agents act. Follow each consequential operation from intent to an attributable outcome—even when the work waits or a response is lost.
See it in practice Explore capabilitiesResolve before retry
A payment provider loses its acknowledgement after receiving a refund request.
Slack#refund-ops
ChannelThe timeout does not tell us whether money moved.
Original result unknownScope review
- Operation
- RF-1048
- Provider reply
- Missing
- Next
- Reconcile before retry
Check the provider using that same operation identity.
The provider confirmed the first refund.
Original refund foundRecorded
- Provider
- Confirmed original effect
- Second request
- None sent
I’ll report one confirmed refund. There is no second refund attempt.
Request rejected. No action was dispatched. A new request needs its own review.
Ready
- Morgan
- Slack
- DriftGate
- Payment provider
- Outcome
WHY IT MATTERS
A good prompt is not an execution boundary.
An agent’s output can be a recommendation—or an instruction that changes the world outside the model. Sending a contract, publishing a campaign, modifying a production service and issuing a payment all require more than a good prompt.
DriftGate connects the proposed operation to a current authorization decision and an attributable result. Evaluate the actor, destination, material inputs, approvals and limits before the protected effect. Preserve the identity of the operation through waits, retries and recovery, then retain the evidence needed to establish its outcome.
HOW IT WORKS
From explicit intent to a known result.
A governed action identifies who is acting, the exact operation, the intended resource and connection, and the relevant project/profile context. Approval is bound to those material inputs. If the request changes, the old approval does not silently cover the new operation.
Some actions complete immediately; others wait for a reviewer, timer, callback or provider response. Durable governance keeps the decision context and recovery state available through that lifecycle. Current authority still matters when work resumes.
Propose
Identify the exact action, destination and material inputs.
Decide
Allow, request approval or deny under current authority.
Execute
Use the governed adapter and preserve operation identity.
Resolve
Record the outcome; reconcile uncertainty before another effect.
WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL
Runtime Governance & Execution Control
E01Action authorization
Check the exact actor, operation, target, connection and current authority before a protected effect.
See related workflowsE02Approval workflows
Bind approvals to material inputs, resource, revision and expiry. Re-evaluate changed requests.
See related workflowsE03Capability controls
Constrain eligible tools and actions, and enforce those constraints on direct invocation.
See related workflowsE04Execution limits
Bound supported operations by concurrency, duration, size and rate at the actual execution point.
See related workflowsE05Budgets and quotas
Track and constrain supported usage. Hard limits require enforceable reservations or provider controls.
See related workflowsE06Runtime policy enforcement
Apply shared decisions through qualified adapters, including revocation and queued-work rechecks.
See related workflowsE07Effect isolation
Bind effects to intended destinations and isolate owned execution resources from unrelated environments.
See related workflowsE08Idempotency and safety
Preserve operation identity, reject material conflicts and avoid unsafe duplicate effects.
See related workflowsE09Execution receipts
Retain scoped, attributable records of authority, relevant versions, execution state and bounded results.
See related workflowsE10Reconciliation
Resolve an uncertain outcome using the original effect identity before considering a retry or recovery.
See related workflowsIN PRACTICE · EXAMPLE WORKFLOW
Resolve the complaint. Control the refund.
A food-delivery platform uses an assistant to resolve a missing order. A customer requests more than the eligible refund or asks for a different payment destination.
Bind the action to the authenticated customer, order, refundable amount, approved destination and current policy. Allow routine eligible refunds, route exceptions to review and reject unauthorized destination changes.
See the workflowTHE INTENDED RESULT
Support can resolve ordinary complaints quickly without unrestricted payment-system access. Keep the actual result and reconcile any missing acknowledgement.
THE OPERATIONAL RESULT
An activity log tells you what was called. Governance decides what may happen.
A trace can show that a tool was called. Runtime governance addresses whether it may be called, under which current authority, against which resource, and how an uncertain result is resolved. A receipt makes that relationship inspectable; it is not just a green checkmark in a timeline.
MORE WAYS TO USE IT
Find your next workflow.
RETAIL
Keep your support agent focused on support.
A shopping assistant is steered away from product and order questions toward unrelated coding or repeated expensive generation.
Runtime controls
FINANCIAL OPERATIONS
A timed-out refund should not become two refunds.
A payment provider receives a refund request, but the acknowledgement is lost. The agent wants to repeat it.
Runtime controls
MARKETING
A campaign approval is not a blank check.
A campaign is approved for a defined creative, audience, account and budget. The agent changes a material input before publication.
Runtime controls
YOUR QUESTIONS
A little more detail.
What if the payment provider times out?
Keep the original effect identity and an unknown outcome. Query the provider or authoritative evidence for that same operation before considering another effect. A timeout alone does not establish that nothing happened.
Does approval cover a changed request?
No. Approval is tied to the reviewed material inputs, resource and revision. A changed destination, amount or other material input requires the appropriate new decision.
Does a tool gateway also control spoken responses?
Not automatically. Tool authorization controls an integrated effect path. Conversation and voice-output checks require a request/response or pre-speech delivery checkpoint.
BUILD WITH INTENTION