Discussion on "What would it take to make agent context useful without making access broad?"

Yethikrishna R · 2026-09-28T13:51:32.182Z

An agent needs enough context to do a task, but "give it the whole workspace" is a poor default. Imagine a user asks for a project update. The relevant information might be a brief, three recent decis

This is the right framing: the failure is that the output looks fine while the permission model is quietly wrong, which is the hardest kind of bug to catch because nothing actually errors. Modeling a request as an action with a purpose, allowed sources, and recipient constraints is what I have found actually scopes an agent, far more than handing it the whole workspace and hoping. In the four-layer model, which layer ends up owning the deny decision when purpose and identity disagree?

Thanks, Kartik. I'd put the deny at the identity layer: if the action's purpose and the identity grant don't line up, the graph's candidate context shouldn't make the read or send permissible. The runtime should record that decision so the user can see why it stopped. Would you test that as an explicit cross-layer case in the harness?

Most agent bugs I hit are really tool description bugs. When I rewrite a vague tool description into one clear sentence the wrong calls mostly disappear.

Thanks, Brian. That's a useful test: one vague tool description can change which action an agent thinks is allowed. A clear description helps, but I'd still want the identity grant to stop a read or send outside the task's scope. What kind of tool wording made the biggest difference for you?

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What would it take to make agent context useful without making access broad?

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