Default policy: record everything, ask a person only for a short list of costly actions; today's rules as strict mode

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
python
Domain
ai-infra-agents, security

Research direction

Start by reading the policy rules and replay fixtures behind #598, then identify the E17 and E21 baselines and the viewer, doctor, README, and docs/limits.md entry points. Replay the owner's week against the proposed default and strict mode; done means all merge-gate counts and advisories pass, strict verdicts match today's baseline, and the docs and viewer report the new behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

On a coding agent's real week, Tracekit still stops about 29.6 harmless calls a day, down from 43 after #598. Every harmless stop teaches the person to approve without reading. The owner approved a new default on 2026-11-04.

The new default (coding agents): every call is still decided, signed and recorded. A person is asked only for a short list of costly or security-relevant actions:

  • spending money;
  • sending messages, emails or posts outside;
  • deleting data outside the project or on remotes;
  • deploy, push or merge to shared places;
  • touching secrets or credentials, or sending them out;
  • running downloaded code;
  • changing the guardrails (hooks, Tracekit, agent harness settings).

Lines Tracekit can't read still wait for the person. Everything else is recorded and allowed.

Strict mode: today's full rules, as one switch (tracekit init --strict, or a pack name). Strict is recommended for production servers and evals.

Done when:

  • A replay of the owner's real week through the default meets the merge gate:
    • all 8 needed stops still stop;
    • under 5 harmless stops a day;
    • every spelling from the published advisories, and from #598's review rounds, still stops where it touches the short list.
  • Strict mode gives today's verdicts on E17 and E21, with the baseline unchanged.
  • The README, docs/limits.md and the demo describe the default honestly, and tracekit doctor says which mode is active.
  • The viewer shows a "worth a look" list per run: the recorded calls that matched a former stop rule.
Dominant language
Python
Stars
137
Forks
8
Avg merge
4h 39m
Merged PRs (30d)
376

Getting set up

First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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