Policies

A policy is a rule attached to your organization or a single workflow. In the dashboard they live under Governance → Policies. Each policy answers one question:

"Is this call allowed, blocked, or does it need a human to approve?"

What you see in the dashboard

The Policies page lists every policy in your org. Each row shows:

Name — you set this when you created the policy
Type — what the policy caps (see the table below)
Scope — applies to the whole org, or only one workflow
Active toggle — on/off without deleting
Effective from — when the policy was last edited

Click a policy to edit it. Changes apply to the next gate call — there's no need to redeploy your agent.

The three policy types

Type	What it controls	Example value
BudgetLimit	Maximum spend per workflow per period	`5000` ($50.00)
RateLimit	Maximum calls per minute	`60` (one call per second sustained)
ToolBlock	Tools the agent must not call	`["send_*", "db.drop", "stripe.charge"]`

Each type has a JSON config payload — see the Tool policies page for the glob-match syntax inside ToolBlock.

BudgetLimit — extra fields

A BudgetLimit policy can carry these optional fields (Phase 1 / MVP 1.0 audit fix, positioning §3.4.2 + §7):

Field	Default	What it does
`enforcement_mode`	`"Hard"`	`Hard` blocks on budget exceeded. `Soft` allows a bounded overdraft when an active chain is present.
`max_overdraft_cents`	`0`	Maximum overdraft in cents (per-org aggregate). Both `cents` and `percent` apply — the lower cap wins.
`max_overdraft_percent`	`0`	Maximum overdraft as percent of the budget.
`max_chain_duration_seconds`	`3600`	Maximum duration of a chain started under this policy before the gate refuses.

The gate's aggregate_policies() reads these fields from every applicable BudgetLimit and uses most-restrictive-wins: enforcement_mode (Hard > Soft), max_overdraft_cents (min), max_overdraft_percent (min).

Aggregation

When two policies in the merged set compete, the engine picks the most restrictive one for numeric caps and the union for tool patterns.

Field	If two policies disagree
`budget_cents`	The smaller number wins
`max_calls_per_minute`	The smaller number wins
`enforcement_mode`	`Hard` beats `Soft`
`max_overdraft_cents`	The smaller number wins
`max_overdraft_percent`	The smaller number wins
`tool_pattern` / `blocked_tools` / `tools`	Both lists are merged (a tool blocked anywhere is blocked everywhere)

You can't accidentally un-block a tool the org blocks. There is no "allow" rule that overrides a "block" — the system is conservative on purpose.

Org-level vs workflow-level

A policy has one of two scopes:

Org — applies to every workflow in your organization. Useful for "all our agents must block db.drop" or "everyone gets 60 calls/min".
Workflow — applies to one workflow only. Useful for "this specific agent gets $500/month" or "this one agent can call send_email".

Both scopes apply at the same time. There's no "overrides" — both sets of rules run together. The dashboard's Effective policy tab on a workflow page shows the merged set.

Templates

The dashboard ships with templates — pre-built policies for common patterns. To enable one:

On the Policies page, click Templates.
Pick a template (e.g. "Cap dev workflow at 100c/min" or "Block all write tools").
Click Enable.

The template materialises as a real policy in your org using its config and name. Disable reverses it. Templates save you from hand-authoring JSON.

Plan gating

Some policy features are plan-restricted. Per the entitlements matrix in CLAUDE.md §17.7:

Feature	Available on
`BudgetLimit` policies	All plans
`RateLimit` policies	All plans
`ToolBlock` policies	Growth+ (`Feature::CustomPolicies`)
Approval rules (Phase 1 typed predicates)	Growth+ (`Feature::Approvals`)
`audit_log` feature	Growth+

If you try to create a feature your plan doesn't include, the dashboard shows the feature greyed out with an "Upgrade" link.

Approval rules — separate from ToolBlock

Approval rules are not a ToolBlock policy with an action = require_approval field. They are a separate entity in the approval_rules table with:

tool_patterns TEXT[] — the glob patterns
per_call_threshold_cents BIGINT NULLABLE — Phase 0 projected-cost threshold
action_predicate JSONB NULLABLE — Phase 1 typed BusinessImpact predicate ({"kind":"money_amount",...} or {"kind":"tool_parameters",...})
priority, expires_in_seconds, action_label

When a rule fires, the gate returns decision = "require_approval" and the SDK parks on event.wait(timeout=...) until the operator clicks Approve / Deny on the dashboard. See Human approval for the full flow including the Разрыв 1c WebSocket push and the typed action_digest binding.

How to create one

Governance → Policies → New policy.
Pick the type (BudgetLimit / RateLimit / ToolBlock).
Pick the scope (Org or specific workflow).
Fill in the config. The dashboard validates the JSON in real time and shows errors before you save.
Save. The policy is active immediately.

To test a new policy before rolling it out broadly, scope it to one workflow. The dashboard's Effective policy tab on that workflow's detail page shows the merged result so you can see exactly what your agent will see.

What gets logged

Every policy decision is recorded in Governance → Audit log. You can filter by:

Workflow
Decision type (allow / block / require_approval)
Time window
Tool name (for ToolBlock matches)

The audit log is the source of truth for "why did my agent stop working at 14:32 yesterday?". Pair it with Traces to see the exact request that triggered the decision.