Lesson 1694 of 2116
Agentic AI: designing the tool allowlist that bounds the agent
An agent can only do what its tools allow. Design the tool surface to make safe actions easy and dangerous ones impossible.
Lesson map
What this lesson covers
Learning path
The main moves in order
- 1The premise
- 2agent tools
- 3allowlists
- 4blast radius
Concept cluster
Terms to connect while reading
Section 1
The premise
Agent safety lives at the tool boundary, not the prompt. If your agent has a delete_user tool, it will eventually call it. The right design exposes only the verbs your use case requires.
What AI does well here
- Call the tools you provide with parameters drawn from context
- Stop calling tools that error consistently
- Compose multi-step plans across the available verbs
What AI cannot do
- Restrain itself from dangerous tools by policy alone
- Distinguish a tool used wisely from one used recklessly
- Audit its own tool history without your help
Key terms in this lesson
End-of-lesson quiz
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