Policy Engine Specification

Document ID: AGENT-007
File Path: docs/04-agent-framework/policy-engine.md
Version: 1.0.0
Status: Draft
Owner: AI Platform Team
Last Updated: 2026-06-26

---

1. Purpose

The Policy Engine is the centralized governance component of the Wovyr AI Platform responsible for enforcing security, compliance, operational, and business rules across every subsystem.

Every request executed by an Agent, Workflow, Tool, API, or Human Approval passes through the Policy Engine before execution.

The Policy Engine guarantees that all executions comply with:

• Platform security policies
• Organization policies
• Project policies
• Agent policies
• Tool permissions
• Regulatory compliance
• Tenant isolation

---

2. Objectives

The Policy Engine shall provide:

• Centralized policy evaluation
• RBAC
• ABAC
• Policy inheritance
• Runtime enforcement
• Policy versioning
• Multi-tenant isolation
• Compliance validation
• Secret protection
• Audit logging
• Risk scoring

---

3. Design Principles

1. Policies are declarative.
2. Policies are immutable after publication.
3. Every execution is evaluated.
4. Deny overrides allow.
5. Policies are versioned.
6. Policy evaluation is deterministic.
7. Policy evaluation is observable.

---

4. High-Level Architecture

                    User Request
                         │
                         ▼
                    Agent Runtime
                         │
                         ▼
                   Policy Engine
                         │
      ┌──────────────────┼──────────────────┐
      ▼                  ▼                  ▼
 RBAC Engine      ABAC Engine      Compliance Engine
      │                  │                  │
      └──────────────────┼──────────────────┘
                         ▼
                 Decision Engine
                         │
                         ▼
              Allow / Deny / Conditional

---

5. Scope

The Policy Engine governs:

• Agent execution
• Workflow execution
• Tool invocation
• Memory access
• Secret access
• API calls
• File access
• Database access
• Network communication
• Human approvals

---

6. Policy Hierarchy

Platform Policy

↓

Organization Policy

↓

Project Policy

↓

Workflow Policy

↓

Agent Policy

↓

Tool Policy

↓

Execution Policy

Higher-level policies override lower-level policies.

---

7. Policy Types

Policy	Purpose
Security	Authentication & authorization
Compliance	Regulatory enforcement
Data	Data classification
Runtime	Resource limits
Network	Network permissions
Memory	Memory access
Tool	Tool permissions
Workflow	Workflow restrictions
Audit	Logging requirements
AI	Model usage policies

---

8. Policy Lifecycle

Draft

↓

Validated

↓

Approved

↓

Published

↓

Active

↓

Deprecated

↓

Archived

Published policies are immutable.

---

9. Policy Definition

Example:

apiVersion: wovyr.ai/v1

kind: Policy

metadata:

  id: no-shell-access

  version: 1.0.0

spec:

  effect: deny

  target:

    tools:

      - shell

  condition:

    environment:

      production

---

10. RBAC (Role-Based Access Control)

Supported roles:

• Platform Administrator
• Organization Administrator
• Project Owner
• Developer
• QA Engineer
• Auditor
• AI Agent
• Viewer

Permissions are assigned to roles.

---

11. ABAC (Attribute-Based Access Control)

Attributes include:

• Tenant
• Environment
• Project
• Department
• Risk Level
• Data Classification
• Region
• Time
• Device

ABAC enables fine-grained authorization.

---

12. Policy Evaluation Flow

Execution Request

↓

Load Policies

↓

Resolve Inheritance

↓

Evaluate Conditions

↓

Calculate Decision

↓

Return Result

Evaluation occurs before execution.

---

13. Decision Outcomes

Possible outcomes:

• Allow
• Deny
• Conditional Allow
• Require Approval
• Retry Later

---

14. Conditions

Supported conditions:

• Time
• Date
• Region
• Tenant
• User
• Agent
• Workflow
• Environment
• Tags
• Labels
• Resource Usage

---

15. Approval Policies

Certain operations require approval.

Examples:

• Production deployment
• Secret export
• Database deletion
• Financial transactions
• External API access

Approval integrates with the Workflow Engine.

---

16. Data Classification

Supported levels:

Public

↓

Internal

↓

Confidential

↓

Restricted

↓

Highly Confidential

Access depends on clearance level.

---

17. Tool Policies

Policies may restrict:

• Tool availability
• Tool parameters
• Execution duration
• Network access
• Filesystem access
• Environment variables

Example:

tool:

  filesystem:

    readonly: true

  shell:

    enabled: false

---

18. Memory Policies

Memory access may be restricted by:

• Tenant
• Agent
• Project
• Classification
• Tags
• Time

Sensitive memories require explicit permission.

---

19. Network Policies

Network restrictions include:

• Allow lists
• Deny lists
• Domain restrictions
• IP restrictions
• Protocol restrictions
• Region restrictions

Default behavior is deny unless explicitly allowed.

---

20. Secret Policies

Secret rules include:

• Read permissions
• Rotation schedules
• Expiration
• Environment restrictions
• Audit requirements

Secrets are never exposed to LLM prompts.

---

21. Compliance Policies

Supported compliance frameworks:

• GDPR
• SOC 2
• ISO 27001
• HIPAA
• PCI DSS
• NIST
• FedRAMP

Compliance rules are configurable.

---

22. Audit Logging

Every policy decision generates an audit record.

Example:

requestId:
policyId:
decision:
reason:
timestamp:
actor:
resource:

Audit records are immutable.

---

23. Risk Scoring

The engine calculates a runtime risk score.

Factors:

• Requested tool
• Data sensitivity
• User role
• Environment
• External connectivity
• Compliance impact

High-risk requests may require approval.

---

24. Rust Interface

pub trait PolicyEngine {

    fn evaluate(
        &self,
        request: PolicyRequest,
    ) -> PolicyDecision;

    fn validate(
        &self,
        policy: Policy,
    ) -> Result<()>;

    fn publish(
        &self,
        policy: Policy,
    ) -> Result<PolicyId>;
}

---

25. Module Organization

engine-policy/
├── evaluator/
├── rbac/
├── abac/
├── compliance/
├── approvals/
├── conditions/
├── audit/
├── registry/
├── metrics/
└── mod.rs

---

26. Testing Strategy

Unit Tests

• Rule evaluation
• Condition matching
• Policy inheritance
• Risk scoring

Integration Tests

• Workflow Engine
• Tool Framework
• Memory System
• Provider SDK

Performance Tests

• Million-policy evaluations
• High concurrency
• Complex rule trees

---

27. Non-Functional Requirements

Requirement	Target
Policy evaluation	< 5 ms
Rule lookup	< 2 ms
Decision generation	< 10 ms
Availability	99.99%

---

28. Dependencies

• docs/03-workflow-engine/agent-runtime.md
• docs/04-agent-framework/tool-framework.md
• docs/04-agent-framework/context-manager.md
• docs/04-agent-framework/memory-system.md

---

29. Related Documents

• docs/04-agent-framework/agent-definition.md
• docs/04-agent-framework/provider-sdk.md
• docs/03-workflow-engine/security.md
• docs/03-workflow-engine/rbac.md

---

30. Future Enhancements

• AI-assisted policy generation
• Natural language policies
• Policy simulation
• Runtime policy learning
• Cross-region policy federation
• Dynamic compliance packs
• Visual policy designer

---

31. Revision History

Version	Date	Description
1.0.0	2026-06-26	Initial Policy Engine Specification