Runtime Enforcement for AI Agents

Overview

Runtime enforcement governs what AI agents may do while they are running, especially when tool calls can change files, access data, spend money, or control devices. Common approaches intercept actions at a trusted boundary and apply permissions, policies, behavioral contracts, or formal checks; other systems track action history and provenance, require human approval, or verify effects before committing them. These controls are studied in settings such as coding and web agents, financial workflows, scientific tools, and robotics, with benchmarks measuring both blocked attacks and preserved task success. A central challenge is balancing safety with useful autonomy: policies must account for context and changing state, while evidence for guarantees often remains limited to specific environments and assumptions.

Latest papers

CardsList

279 papers81 papers in the last four weeks, up 8% on the four weeks before. 0.5% of all new papers.

  1. ActGov: Governing LLM Agent Actions via Policy-Constrained Validation

    Sep 21, 2026Kaiyuan Zhang, Yuke Peng, Ke Jiang +1LLM Agent SecurityRuntime Enforcement for AI Agents

  2. APEXA: Execution-Integrity Enforcement for Multi-Agent LLM Automation of Synchrotron Data Reduction

    Sep 21, 2026Pawan K. Tripathi, Hemant Sharma, Andrew Chuang +1Runtime Enforcement for AI AgentsScientific Workflow Automation

  3. Self-Healing Harness for Runtime Oversight of Agent Self-Modification

    Sep 21, 2026Sina Tayebati, Divake Kumar, Nastaran Darabi +2Runtime Enforcement for AI AgentsLLM Agent Harnesses

  4. Environment Steering: Using Data Flow Control to Improve Agent Utility and Safety

    Sep 19, 2026Charlie Summers, Prajwal Raghunath, Aaditya Pai +4AI Agent SecurityLLM Agent Safety

  5. From Capability to Assurance in Autonomous Penetration-Testing Harnesses: A Framework and Reference Implementation

    Sep 19, 2026Joas Antonio dos Santos BarbosaAutomated Penetration TestingRuntime Enforcement for AI Agents

  6. Authorization Revocation for Long-Running AI Agents: Root-Scoped Quiescence under Delegation and Asynchronous Execution

    Sep 18, 2026Genliang Zhu, Chu WangRuntime Enforcement for AI AgentsTool Access Control for LLM Agents

  7. Cognitive Extensions for Dual-Process Language Agents: Memory and Self-Reflection in Interactive Environments

    Sep 16, 2026João Meneses dos Santos, Arlindo L. OliveiraCognitive Architectures for AI AgentsSelf-Reflection in Language Model Agents

  8. Autonomy in Check: Governor-Mediated Adaptive Security at the Edge

    Sep 16, 2026Ijaz Ahmad, Ijaz Ahmad, Flavio Esposito +1Autonomous Cyber DefenseAI Agent Security

  9. Symbolic Temporal Supervision of LLM Agents Using Contracts

    Sep 16, 2026Yifeng Xiao, Pierluigi NuzzoRuntime Enforcement for AI AgentsLLM Agent Safety

  10. DriveMCP: An Agentic AI framework for Advanced Driver Assistance System

    Sep 15, 2026Farzad Nadiri, Mehdi Cina, Ahmad B. RadVLMs for Autonomous DrivingIntelligent Transportation Systems

  11. OpenAI4S: Code as Action, Science as Sessions

    Sep 14, 2026Gongbo Zhang, Hao Li, Yu Wang +15Data ProvenanceRuntime Enforcement for AI Agents

  12. ActGuard: Pre-execution Action Auditing against Indirect Prompt Injection in LLM Agents

    Sep 14, 2026Bingzheng Wang, Xiaoyan Gu, Wentao Wang +3Runtime Enforcement for AI AgentsPrompt Injection Defense

  13. Runtime Authorization for Resources Acquired by AI Agents

    Sep 13, 2026Genliang Zhu, Chu WangAI Agent SecurityRuntime Enforcement for AI Agents

  14. Do Not Restart: Residual Completion for Stateful Agent Handoffs

    Sep 12, 2026Runzhi Deng, Yiming Zhong, Fang Zhao +1LLM Agent OrchestrationRuntime Enforcement for AI Agents

  15. Recoverability as a System Primitive for Long-Horizon AI Agents

    Sep 12, 2026Zhihui Zhang, Wei LiuAI Agent ReliabilityRuntime Enforcement for AI Agents

  16. Can AI Agents Deliver Verifiable Network-Wide Outcomes Across Authority Boundaries?

    Sep 9, 2026Tianzhu Zhang, Chih-Kai Huang, Meikang QiuMulti-Agent OrchestrationLLM Agent Verification

  17. No Free Checker: A Survey of Verifiers for Robot Policies

    Sep 8, 2026Yang Wan, Xihang Yue, Zhirui Liu +7Robotic Policy EvaluationFormal Verification

  18. From Version Conflicts to Decision Conflicts: Selective Revalidation for Long-Running AI Agents

    Sep 7, 2026Yongjian Lyu, Yang Ren, Ruofei Lai +1Tool-Using AgentsRuntime Enforcement for AI Agents