- Every action declares a purpose. No purpose, no action.
- Purpose lives outside the agent. The system records and enforces it; the agent doesn’t get to decide what it just did.
- Identity is necessary but not sufficient. Who is asking matters. Why they’re asking matters more.
- Default to deny. New purposes are observed before they’re allowed.
- Allow narrow, deny broad. Approve elements one at a time, not whole tables.
- Bound credentials by purpose, not by user. Standing credentials are a liability; just-in-time credentials with TTLs are the answer.
- Audit everything. Every allow, every deny, every approval is queryable.
- Humans approve the categories. Agents stay within them. Don’t make humans approve every query; make them shape the policy.
- Anomaly is a question, not an answer. A first-time pattern is a conversation between operator and agent — not an automatic block.
- The right hand always knows what the left hand is doing. Single intent-token claim format across IdP, gateway, vault, and DB proxy.