Guardrails

Guardrails are policy rules that prevent agents from making decisions that violate established constraints. They act as suppressors - blocking actions at the moment they’d execute.

Built-in Rules

no-high-stakes-low-confidence

Blocks high-stakes decisions when confidence is below 50%.

- id: no-high-stakes-low-confidence
  condition_stakes: high
  condition_confidence: "< 0.5"
  action: block
  message: High-stakes decisions require 50% confidence or more

no-production-without-review

Blocks production changes that haven’t been code reviewed.

- id: no-production-without-review
  condition_affects_production: true
  requires_code_review: true
  action: block
  message: Production changes require completed code review

Checking Guardrails

cstp.py check -d "deploy to production without review" -s high -f 0.85

Response when blocked:

{
  "allowed": false,
  "violations": [
    {
      "guardrail_id": "no-production-without-review",
      "message": "Production changes require completed code review"
    }
  ]
}

Custom Guardrails

Add custom rules in guardrails/ YAML files:

- id: no-trading-without-backtest
  description: Trading strategy changes need backtesting
  scope: CryptoTrader
  condition_affects_trading: true
  requires_backtest: true
  action: block
  message: Run backtest before changing trading strategy

Templates

Pre-built guardrail templates are available in guardrails/templates/:

• financial.yaml - Rules for financial/trading systems
• production-safety.yaml - Rules for production deployments

Future: Censors (F027)

Current guardrails are reactive (block at action time). A future censor layer will proactively warn when query results surface failed decisions with similar patterns - intercepting before the bad decision forms. See F033 spec.