HOME
Version 0.1
Technical Brief
Metadyne Technical Brief
Domain: metadyne.ai
Purpose: Engineering-grade overview of Metadyne's supervision model, interfaces, deployment patterns, and operational outputs.
Request Access
1) Summary
Metadyne is a supervisory intelligence layer that sits above execution. It governs system actions by evaluating proposed behavior against enforceable constraints, explicit authority, and operational stability requirements.
Metadyne is designed for environments where autonomy is increasing, the action space is large (tools, APIs, agents, workflows), and outcomes must remain bounded, auditable, and accountable.
In modern system architectures, the proliferation of autonomous agents, API-driven workflows, and distributed decision-making creates substantial governance challenges. Traditional access control mechanisms operate at authentication and authorization boundaries but lack the contextual awareness and fine-grained control needed to govern complex, multi-step operations that span trust domains, data classifications, and risk thresholds.

Core Principle: Metadyne does not replace your systems. It supervises them.
This architectural approach separates concerns cleanly: your execution plane focuses on capability and performance, while Metadyne's supervision plane ensures that capability is exercised within acceptable boundaries. This separation enables teams to iterate rapidly on autonomous capabilities while maintaining organizational risk posture, regulatory compliance, and operational stability.
2) Design Objectives
Metadyne is engineered around five foundational design objectives that guide every architectural decision, implementation choice, and operational characteristic. These objectives reflect lessons learned from production autonomous systems, regulatory requirements in high-stakes domains, and the practical realities of deploying governance infrastructure at scale.
Enforceability
Constraints bind. They are not advisory. When Metadyne evaluates a proposed action against a constraint, the outcome is deterministic and enforceable. This design principle distinguishes Metadyne from monitoring or recommendation systems that merely observe and suggest.
Enforcement is the foundation of accountable autonomy.
Human Authority
Authority is explicit, attributable, and reviewable. Every permission, delegation, and approval is traceable to a specific human decision-maker or organizational role. Metadyne rejects implicit authority models where permissions accumulate through side effects or historical artifacts.
Clear authority chains enable accountability at scale.
Stability
Predictable behavior beats maximum throughput. Metadyne prioritizes operational stability over optimization for edge cases. Systems governed by Metadyne exhibit bounded behavior, graceful degradation under stress, and fail-safe characteristics that prevent cascading failures.
Stability is a system property, not an operational accident.
Auditability
Every governed decision leaves a trace suitable for review. Metadyne produces structured, machine-readable audit trails that capture what was proposed, what was evaluated, what decision was made, and why. These trails support compliance review, incident investigation, and continuous improvement.
Auditability is designed in, not retrofitted.
Integratability
Works with existing stacks through simple interception points. Metadyne integrates at well-defined control chokepoints in your architecture without requiring wholesale replacement of orchestrators, agents, or workflows. Integration patterns are designed for incremental adoption and coexistence with legacy systems.
Governance infrastructure must work with reality.
3) System Model
Metadyne treats any autonomous or semi-autonomous system as a control loop with distinct supervision and execution planes. This mental model applies whether you're governing a single agent calling external APIs, a multi-agent orchestration system, or a complex workflow engine managing cross-domain operations.
1
System Proposes
An autonomous component proposes an action with specific parameters and target
2
Metadyne Evaluates
The proposed action is evaluated against constraints, authority, and context
3
Metadyne Governs
A control decision is made: permit, block, reshape, require approval, or throttle
4
Execution Occurs
The governed action executes (or is blocked/modified) in the execution plane
5
Evidence Recorded
Structured audit evidence is captured for compliance and review
Architectural Planes
Supervision Plane
Metadyne operates in the supervision plane, evaluating proposed actions against policy, enforcing constraints, and recording decisions. This plane is concerned with governance, not execution.
  • Policy evaluation and constraint checking
  • Authority resolution and approval workflows
  • Control decision computation
  • Audit trail generation
Execution Plane
Your agents, tools, services, and workflows operate in the execution plane, performing actual work. This plane is concerned with capability and performance.
  • Tool and API invocation
  • Data access and transformation
  • Workflow state transitions
  • Resource consumption
Core Entities
Actor
Who or what is attempting an action: user identity, agent identifier, service account, or automated process. Actor resolution includes authentication context and assigned roles.
Action
The proposed operation with specific parameters: call tool, write record, send message, deploy change, read data, modify configuration, or trigger workflow transition.
Context
Relevant state for evaluation: environment (research/production), policy scope, risk level, data classification, time window, rate limits, budgets, and prior action history.
Authority
Who can authorize the action under what conditions: explicit delegations, role-based permissions, time-bound grants, or required approvals from specific individuals or roles.
Constraints
What must be true for action to proceed and what must never happen: allowed operations, data handling rules, permitted destinations, required preconditions, bounded scopes, and prohibited patterns.
Decision
The governed outcome with attached obligations and evidence: permit/block/reshape/approve/throttle, modified parameters, redactions, rate limits, and structured audit record.
4) What Metadyne Governs
Metadyne focuses on actions with consequence—operations that cross trust boundaries, consume resources, modify state, or expose the organization to risk. The system is designed to govern high-leverage control points where autonomous behavior intersects with organizational policy, regulatory requirements, or operational stability concerns.
Tool and API Calls
External services, internal microservices, third-party integrations, SaaS platforms, cloud provider APIs, and custom tool endpoints. Metadyne governs parameters, destinations, authentication scope, rate limits, and cost budgets for any API-based interaction.
Data Access and Transformation
Read, write, export, transform, aggregate, or delete operations on classified data. Metadyne enforces data handling rules based on PII, PHI, financial, or proprietary classifications. Controls include redaction, scoping, approved destinations, and required attestation.
Workflow Transitions
State changes in orchestrated processes, approval chain progression, escalation triggers, and cross-domain handoffs. Metadyne governs which actors can advance workflows, under what conditions, and with what approval requirements.
Resource Usage
Rate limits, cost budgets, token consumption, compute allocation, storage quotas, and bandwidth. Metadyne enforces operational boundaries that prevent runaway resource consumption, budget overruns, or denial-of-service conditions caused by autonomous behavior.
Autonomy Elevation
Agent self-expansion behaviors including new tool adoption, capability extension, permission requests, and self-modification workflows. Metadyne governs when and how autonomous systems can increase their own scope of action.
Cross-Domain Actions
Operations that move data or control across trust boundaries: production to research, internal to external, regulated to unregulated, or between geographic jurisdictions. Metadyne enforces boundary controls, data transformation requirements, and approval workflows for cross-domain operations.
5) Core Capabilities
5.1 Constraint Enforcement
Metadyne evaluates proposed actions against a comprehensive constraint system that encodes organizational policy, regulatory requirements, and operational boundaries. Constraints are expressed in a structured policy language that supports composition, inheritance, and environment-specific overrides.
Constraint Categories
  • Allowed/denied operations by environment: Different rule sets for research, staging, production, and regulated zones
  • Data classification rules: Handling requirements for PII, PHI, financial data, proprietary information, and regulated categories
  • Permitted destinations: Approved endpoints, domains, accounts, regions, and network zones
  • Required preconditions: Approvals, attestations, dual control, time-of-day restrictions, and sequential dependencies
  • Bounded scopes: Time windows, quotas, maximum blast radius, rate limits, and cost ceilings
Control Outcomes
Metadyne produces deterministic control outcomes based on constraint evaluation. Each outcome includes structured rationale and is recorded in the audit trail.
Permit
Allow action as proposed. All constraints satisfied, authority confirmed, no modifications required.
Block
Deny action. Constraint violation detected, insufficient authority, or prohibited pattern matched.
Reshape
Modify parameters to achieve compliance: apply redaction, restrict scope, change routing, or limit payload size.
Require Approval
Hold action until authorized by designated approver. Includes timeout handling and escalation rules.
Throttle
Apply rate limiting, budget controls, or slow mode to manage resource consumption or risk exposure.
Sandbox
Redirect to safe environment for testing, validation, or quarantine before production execution.
5.2 Stability Controls
Metadyne adds operational governors that prevent runaway behavior, cascading failures, and resource exhaustion. These stability mechanisms operate independently of constraint enforcement and provide defense-in-depth against emergent system behaviors.
Rate Limits and Budgets
Enforce boundaries on cost, token consumption, API call volume, and compute allocation. Budgets can be scoped by actor, environment, time window, or operation type.
Circuit Breakers
Halt execution when anomaly thresholds are exceeded: error rate spikes, latency degradation, unexpected data volumes, or pattern deviations. Includes configurable reset conditions.
Escalation Rules
Require human review after specific triggers: repeated violations, high-risk patterns, budget thresholds, or novel action types. Escalation preserves evidence and blocks further execution.
Rollback and Safe-Fail
Stop safely, preserve state, record evidence, and provide graceful degradation paths. Failure modes are explicit and configured per environment and risk classification.
5.3 Oversight Hooks
Metadyne can require explicit human authority for specific actions, implementing human-in-the-loop patterns that preserve accountability while enabling autonomous operation within approved boundaries.
01
Human-in-the-Loop Gating
Pause execution and request approval from designated human authority before proceeding with high-consequence operations.
02
Role-Based Approval Chains
Route approval requests based on organizational hierarchy, domain expertise, or regulatory requirements. Support sequential and parallel approval flows.
03
Dual Control for High-Risk Operations
Require two independent approvals for operations with significant risk exposure, regulatory implications, or cross-domain impact.
04
Time-Bound Permissions
Grant temporary authority that expires automatically: "approve once", "approve for 30 minutes", or "approve until end of session".
5.4 Audit Trails
Metadyne produces structured, append-only audit evidence for every governed action. Audit records are designed for machine processing, compliance review, incident investigation, and continuous improvement analysis.
Each audit record captures comprehensive decision context in a structured format suitable for automated analysis, regulatory review, and incident investigation. The audit trail is treated as a first-class system output, not a side effect of operation.
Actor Context
Who or what proposed the action: identity, authentication method, assigned roles, and authority scope at time of action.
Constraint Evaluation
What constraints were evaluated, which were satisfied, which were violated, and the logical path through policy evaluation.
Control Decision
What decision was made: permit, block, reshape, require approval, throttle, or sandbox. Includes decision timestamp and version of policy bundle used.
Rationale and References
Why the decision was made: policy references, constraint IDs, authority chain, and human-readable explanation suitable for review.
Execution Details
What was actually executed: final parameters after any reshaping, redactions applied, scopes enforced, and target destinations.
Applied Obligations
What additional controls were applied: redactions, scope restrictions, throttling parameters, required approvals, and monitoring requirements.
Correlation Identifiers
IDs linking this decision to downstream telemetry, execution logs, and related governance events across the system.

Design Principle: Auditability is treated as an output, not an afterthought. The audit trail is a product feature with defined schema, retention policies, and export interfaces.
6) Decision Pipeline
Metadyne's evaluation pipeline is deterministic, composable, and designed for low-latency operation. Each stage produces structured outputs that feed subsequent stages, enabling introspection, testing, and validation of governance logic.
1. Normalize
Canonicalize the action into standard internal representation: type, parameters, target, data classes, and execution context. Normalization handles format variations and provides consistent input to evaluation stages.
2. Identify
Resolve actor identity and authority scope: authenticate caller, determine assigned roles, verify delegation chains, and establish authorization context. Identity resolution may invoke external identity providers or directory services.
3. Classify
Assign risk posture and environment context: determine if environment is regulated, critical, or production. Classify data sensitivity. Compute risk score based on action type, target, and historical patterns. Classification informs constraint selection.
4. Evaluate
Compute constraint satisfaction across all applicable policy rules: check allowed operations, verify data handling requirements, validate destinations, confirm preconditions, and detect violations. Evaluation is deterministic and produces structured results.
5. Govern
Select control outcome based on evaluation results: permit, block, reshape, require approval, throttle, or sandbox. Decision logic considers constraint violations, authority scope, risk classification, and configured failure modes.
6. Record
Emit audit event with complete decision context: actor, action, constraints evaluated, decision made, rationale, execution parameters, and correlation IDs. Audit records are persisted to tamper-evident storage suitable for compliance requirements.
7. Signal
Emit alerts and notifications for threshold violations, policy breaches, approval requirements, or anomaly detection. Signals are routed to monitoring systems, approval queues, or incident management workflows as configured.
The pipeline architecture supports extension points for organization-specific logic, external data enrichment, and integration with existing risk scoring or threat intelligence systems. Each stage is independently testable and can be instrumented for performance analysis and debugging.
7) Integration Patterns
Metadyne is designed to integrate at common control chokepoints in modern system architectures. Integration patterns are chosen based on latency requirements, deployment constraints, and the scope of actions to be governed. Multiple patterns can coexist in a single deployment.
Pattern A: Governance Proxy
API Gateway / Tool Gateway
Intercepts outbound calls to tools and APIs at a centralized gateway layer. All tool invocations route through the governance proxy, which evaluates each call against policy before forwarding to the target service. This pattern enforces constraints consistently across many clients and provides a high-leverage control point.
  • Good for: Agent tool use, third-party integrations, external API calls, SaaS platform access
  • Latency: Single network hop added to request path
  • Deployment: Centralized or regional gateway instances
Pattern B: Orchestrator Supervisor
Workflow-Level Integration
Sits in the workflow engine or agent orchestrator as a supervision layer. Governs state transitions, cross-step behavior, and workflow-level policies. The orchestrator consults Metadyne before advancing workflow state, executing conditional branches, or invoking external capabilities.
  • Good for: Complex multi-step procedures, approval workflows, compliance processes, orchestrated agent systems
  • Latency: Local function call or internal RPC
  • Deployment: Embedded in orchestrator process or sidecar
Pattern C: Runtime Hook
Library / SDK Integration
Embedded evaluation hook inside an agent runtime or application. Provides lowest latency and deepest contextual signals by operating within the execution process. The runtime invokes Metadyne evaluation functions before performing governed actions.
  • Good for: Tightly coupled stacks, controlled deployments, latency-sensitive paths, rich context availability
  • Latency: In-process function call
  • Deployment: Library linked into agent runtime
Pattern D: Event-Driven Governance
Asynchronous Evaluation
Receives events representing proposed or completed actions, evaluates policy, and emits signals or enforcement actions. Suitable for auditing, escalation, post-action controls, and governance of eventually-consistent systems. Events flow through message buses or event streams.
  • Good for: Layered governance, monitoring overlays, compliance auditing, enforcement by downstream systems
  • Latency: Asynchronous, does not block action
  • Deployment: Event processor consuming from message bus
Integration pattern selection depends on organizational architecture, risk tolerance, latency budgets, and the specific actions being governed. Many deployments use multiple patterns: synchronous governance for high-risk operations and asynchronous governance for monitoring and audit.
8) Deployment Modes
Metadyne supports flexible deployment topologies to accommodate diverse organizational requirements, security postures, and operational constraints. Deployment mode selection balances consistency, latency, fault tolerance, and network topology considerations.
Central Control Plane
Policy and decisions served from a central service accessible across environments. Provides consistent governance logic, simplified policy management, and centralized audit collection.
  • Advantages: Single source of truth for policy, simplified updates, centralized observability
  • Considerations: Network dependency, latency to central service, regional compliance requirements
  • Suitable for: Organizations with centralized IT, strong network connectivity, unified policy requirements
Sidecar / Edge Supervisor
Deploy Metadyne near execution for latency optimization and network locality. Each environment or cluster runs a local governance instance. Suitable for segmented networks, edge deployments, or latency-sensitive paths.
  • Advantages: Low latency, local network access, continued operation during network partitions
  • Considerations: Policy distribution, local state management, consistency across instances
  • Suitable for: Segmented networks, edge computing, high-latency WAN links, fault isolation requirements
Hybrid Deployment
Central policy management with local enforcement. Policy bundles distributed to edge supervisors, which make decisions locally. Audit events flow back to central collection.
  • Advantages: Low-latency enforcement with centralized policy, resilient to network issues, scalable to large deployments
  • Considerations: Policy distribution mechanisms, version consistency, audit event aggregation
  • Suitable for: Regulated environments, mission-critical architectures, global deployments, hybrid cloud infrastructure

Production Consideration: Hybrid deployments are common in regulated and mission-critical architectures where policy consistency and local enforcement resilience are both required. Policy bundle distribution uses versioned, signed packages with rollback capabilities.
9) Inputs and Outputs
Inputs (What Metadyne Consumes)
Metadyne evaluation requires rich contextual information to make informed governance decisions. Input signals are normalized to standard schemas and may be enriched with external data sources depending on organizational requirements.
Proposed Action + Parameters
The operation being attempted: tool name, function, arguments, target endpoint, payload structure, and execution modality. Includes both the intended action and any supplied context from the proposing system.
Actor Identity
Who or what is making the request: user identity, service account, agent identifier, authentication method, session context, and assigned roles or groups. May include claims from identity providers.
Environment Context
Where the action is occurring: environment designation (research/staging/production), regulatory zone, geographic region, network segment, and deployment cluster. Environment determines which policy bundles apply.
Policy Bundle
Active constraints and authority rules: versioned policy set including constraint definitions, approval workflows, risk classifications, and failure modes. Policy bundles are scoped by environment and organization.
Contextual Signals
Additional inputs for evaluation: data classification metadata, target destination properties, current budget consumption, time window and schedule context, prior action history, and session state.
Risk Signals (Optional)
External risk assessments: anomaly detection scores from observability systems, threat intelligence flags, fraud detection signals, or custom risk scoring from organizational systems.
Outputs (What Metadyne Produces)
Metadyne produces deterministic, structured outputs designed for both automated consumption and human review. All outputs include correlation identifiers linking governance decisions to downstream execution and observability telemetry.
Control Decision
The governance outcome: permit (allow as proposed), block (deny execution), reshape (modify parameters), approval-required (hold for authority), throttle (rate-limit), or sandbox (redirect to safe environment). Includes structured rationale.
Governed Parameters
Modified action parameters if reshaped: redacted fields, restricted scopes, adjusted targets, transformed payloads, or limited resource allocations. Includes mapping from original to governed parameters.
Obligations
Additional requirements attached to the action: redact specific fields, restrict scope to approved subset, require post-action attestation, apply rate limiting, or mandate monitoring. Obligations are enforceable downstream.
Rationale
Human-readable and machine-processable explanation: which constraints were evaluated, why the decision was made, references to policy rules, and authority chain resolution. Suitable for compliance review and incident investigation.
Audit Event
Append-only record with complete decision context: timestamp, actor, action, constraints, decision, rationale, parameters, obligations, and correlation IDs. Persisted to tamper-evident storage with defined retention.
Alerts
Notifications for exceptional conditions: policy violations, escalation requirements, anomaly detection triggers, threshold breaches, or abnormal patterns. Routed to monitoring dashboards or incident management systems.
Correlation Identifiers
IDs linking governance decisions to downstream execution: request IDs, trace IDs, span IDs, or organization-specific correlation keys. Enables observability systems to associate execution telemetry with governance decisions.
10) Observability and Audit
Metadyne treats observability and audit as first-class system properties. Operational visibility supports real-time monitoring, performance optimization, and incident response. Governance visibility supports compliance review, policy effectiveness analysis, and continuous improvement.
Structured Decision Logs
Machine-readable records of every governance decision in standardized schema. Logs include timing information, evaluation path, and resource consumption metrics. Export formats support SIEM integration, compliance tools, and custom analytics pipelines.
Correlation and Traceability
Every governance decision includes correlation IDs that link to tool execution logs, downstream system telemetry, and related audit events. Distributed tracing integration enables end-to-end visibility from proposal through execution and outcome.
Operational Dashboards
Metadyne provides visibility into governance operations through real-time dashboards and metrics suitable for operational teams, security operations centers, and compliance functions.
2.3K
Actions Governed
Total actions evaluated per hour across all environments
12
Policy Violations
Constraint violations detected requiring block or reshape
5
Pending Approvals
Actions awaiting human authority in approval queue
8
Circuit Breakers
Active throttling or circuit breaker triggers
Governance Metrics
  • Policy violation rates: Frequency and types of constraint violations by actor, environment, and action type
  • Approval queue load: Pending approvals, average resolution time, timeout incidents, and approval patterns
  • Throttling and circuit breakers: Active rate limits, budget consumption, anomaly triggers, and safe-fail activations
  • Drift detection: Divergence between policy and observed behavior, indicating gaps or misconfigurations
Performance Metrics
  • Evaluation latency: P50, P95, P99 latency for governance decisions by integration pattern and environment
  • Throughput: Actions evaluated per second, capacity headroom, scaling behavior
  • Resource utilization: CPU, memory, network for governance infrastructure
  • Availability: Uptime, error rates, degraded mode operation
Export Formats and Integration
Audit records and operational metrics are available through multiple export interfaces to support diverse organizational tooling requirements. Export formats are designed for compliance review, security operations, and continuous improvement analysis.
  • Structured JSON/JSONL: Machine-readable format for analytics pipelines and custom tooling
  • SIEM integration: Standard formats for Splunk, ELK, Azure Sentinel, and similar platforms
  • Compliance reports: Formatted exports suitable for regulatory review and attestation workflows
  • OpenTelemetry: Traces, metrics, and logs emitted to observability platforms
  • API access: Query interfaces for programmatic access to historical decisions and metrics

Design Principle: Observability is treated as a product requirement, not a nice-to-have. Metadyne is designed to be monitored, measured, and continuously improved based on operational and governance metrics.
11) Security Posture
Metadyne is designed around practical security defaults that reflect production deployment realities. The system's security value derives from governance enforcement, not from replacing foundational security controls like authentication, encryption, or network segmentation.
Least Privilege
Enforce narrow scopes for actions and credentials. Metadyne evaluates whether an action requires broader authority than necessary and can automatically restrict scope, redirect to lower-privilege alternatives, or require explicit justification for elevated access. Authority grants are time-bound and revocable.
Policy Integrity
Controlled policy updates, versioning, and signed bundles prevent unauthorized modification of governance rules. Policy changes require authorization and produce audit trails. Implementation-dependent mechanisms include cryptographic signatures, version control integration, and approval workflows for policy publication.
Access Control
Role-based and attribute-based permissions govern who can approve actions and modify policies. Separation between policy authorship, review, and approval prevents single points of failure. Access to governance infrastructure itself is subject to least-privilege and audit requirements.
Separation of Duties
Policy authorship and approval are distinct roles. High-consequence policy changes require dual control. Governance functions are separated from execution functions to prevent bypass. Audit collection is independent of governance enforcement to prevent evidence tampering.
Secure Transport
Encryption in transit using TLS 1.3 or organization-standard protocols. Governance API calls, policy distribution, and audit event transmission use encrypted channels. Certificate management and rotation follow organizational PKI practices.
Secret Hygiene
Avoid policy rules that require exposing sensitive material. Use references to secrets stored in organizational secret management systems (HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, etc.). Governance decisions never log sensitive material. Secret access is audited separately.
Metadyne's security value is governance enforcement—ensuring that autonomous systems operate within approved boundaries, with explicit authority, and with accountability for actions taken. It complements but does not replace authentication, authorization, network security, encryption, vulnerability management, and other foundational security controls.

Security Principle: Metadyne enforces governance over already-authenticated, already-authorized systems. It adds an additional control layer but does not replace foundational security infrastructure.
12) Failure Modes and Safe Behavior
Metadyne is designed to fail in ways that preserve control and organizational safety. When governance cannot be enforced with confidence, the system defaults to conservative outcomes that limit risk exposure. Failure mode behavior is configurable by environment and risk classification.
Safe-Fail Design Principles
Metadyne's failure mode logic prioritizes safety over availability. When faced with ambiguity, missing context, or system failures, Metadyne chooses the outcome that minimizes organizational risk. This design philosophy reflects lessons learned from production autonomous systems operating in high-stakes environments.
1
Default to Block for High-Risk Actions
When policy cannot be evaluated with confidence (network partition, policy service unavailable, malformed evaluation request), high-risk actions are blocked by default. Risk classification determines whether an action receives block, hold-for-approval, or degraded-mode treatment during failures.
2
Hold for Approval on Authority Uncertainty
When authority resolution is uncertain (ambiguous delegation chains, expired credentials, network issues contacting directory services), actions that require explicit authority are held for manual approval rather than proceeding or being denied outright.
3
Degrade to Throttle or Sandbox on Anomaly
When anomaly thresholds are exceeded but governance is otherwise functional, Metadyne can degrade to throttle mode (enforce strict rate limits) or sandbox mode (redirect to safe testing environment) rather than blocking all activity.
4
Always Record Failure Context
Every failure mode decision is recorded with complete context: what failed, why the failure occurred, what fallback behavior was chosen, and what evidence was available. Failure-mode audit records support incident investigation and policy refinement.
Configurable Failure Posture
Exact failure behavior is configured by environment and risk classification. Organizations define failure modes appropriate to their operational requirements, regulatory constraints, and risk tolerance.
Production Environments
Strict failure modes prioritizing safety:
  • High-risk actions default to block
  • Medium-risk actions default to hold for approval
  • Low-risk actions may default to throttle or permit with monitoring
  • Circuit breakers trigger at conservative thresholds
Research Environments
Relaxed failure modes prioritizing availability:
  • Most actions default to permit with monitoring
  • High-consequence actions may default to hold for approval
  • Circuit breakers trigger at higher thresholds
  • Failure events generate notifications but allow degraded operation
Organizations typically define 3-5 environment classifications with distinct failure mode profiles. Policy bundles specify which environment classification applies to each deployment zone.
13) Non-Goals
Metadyne is a focused governance infrastructure designed to enforce constraints over autonomous systems. Understanding what Metadyne is not designed to do helps clarify appropriate use cases and integration patterns.
Not a General-Purpose AI Agent
Metadyne does not autonomously plan, reason, or execute tasks. It evaluates proposed actions against policy and enforces constraints. The intelligence lies in governance logic, not in autonomous goal pursuit or creative problem-solving.
Not a Replacement for Infrastructure
Metadyne does not replace your orchestrator, workflow engine, identity provider, observability platform, or other infrastructure components. It integrates with existing infrastructure to add a governance layer. Organizations should not rip out existing systems to adopt Metadyne.
Not a Substitute for Human Judgment
Metadyne enforces organizational policy but does not replace organizational governance, legal review, or accountable leadership. Policy must be defined by humans who understand organizational risk posture, regulatory requirements, and operational context.
Not a Silver Bullet
Metadyne provides a system property—enforceable governance—but is not a guarantee that "nothing bad can happen." No technical system can fully eliminate organizational risk. Metadyne reduces risk exposure through constraint enforcement and accountability mechanisms.
What Metadyne Provides
Metadyne provides enforceable governance as a system property. It ensures that autonomous systems operate within approved boundaries, with explicit authority, and with accountability for actions taken. This governance property is valuable when:
  • The action space is large and consequences of mistakes are real
  • Regulatory requirements demand auditability and explicit authorization
  • Operational stability requires bounded behavior and circuit breakers
  • Organizational accountability requires traceability from action to authority
Organizations should adopt Metadyne when they need these governance properties, not as a replacement for foundational infrastructure or organizational decision-making processes.
14) Typical Use Cases
Metadyne is designed for environments where autonomous systems interact with high-consequence operations, and where organizations require explicit governance, audit trails, and accountability. These use cases share common characteristics: large action spaces, real costs of mistakes, and regulatory or operational requirements for bounded behavior.
Governed Agentic Tool Use
AI agents calling internal microservices, external APIs, SaaS platforms, and third-party integrations. Metadyne governs which tools can be called, with what parameters, in which environments, and subject to what constraints. Prevents agents from accessing unauthorized systems, exfiltrating sensitive data, or consuming unbounded resources.
Example: Customer support agent with access to CRM, billing, and inventory systems. Metadyne ensures the agent cannot read PII outside its assigned customer accounts, cannot modify billing records without approval, and operates within configured cost budgets.
Regulated Deployments
Autonomous systems operating in healthcare, financial services, government, or other regulated industries where actions must be auditable, decisions must be attributable, and explicit approvals are required for high-consequence operations. Metadyne produces audit trails suitable for regulatory review and compliance attestation.
Example: Healthcare AI analyzing patient records and recommending treatments. Metadyne enforces HIPAA data handling rules, requires physician approval for treatment recommendations, and produces audit trails documenting every data access and clinical decision.
Stability Constraints for Multi-Agent Systems
Orchestrated environments with multiple autonomous agents where coordination failures, resource contention, or runaway behavior could cause cascading failures. Metadyne enforces rate limits, circuit breakers, and budget constraints that prevent individual agent misbehavior from destabilizing the entire system.
Example: Autonomous trading system with multiple strategy agents. Metadyne enforces per-agent position limits, aggregate risk exposure caps, and circuit breakers that halt trading when loss thresholds are exceeded.
High-Consequence Decision Support
Systems where every action must be attributable to a specific human authority. Metadyne requires explicit approval for high-risk operations, maintains clear authority chains, and produces audit trails linking decisions to approvers. Supports dual control and separation of duties requirements.
Example: Infrastructure automation system managing production deployments. Metadyne requires explicit approval from SRE team for production changes, enforces change windows, and produces audit trails documenting who approved what changes and when.
Enterprise Automation Governance
Operational workflows spanning multiple systems, departments, and trust boundaries. Metadyne governs cross-domain operations, enforces data handling requirements, and requires approvals when workflows cross organizational boundaries or involve sensitive data.
Example: Procurement automation system processing purchase requests. Metadyne enforces approval chains based on dollar amounts, restricts vendor selection to approved suppliers, and requires dual control for foreign transactions exceeding regulatory thresholds.
Organizations typically start with a single high-leverage use case (often governed API access or regulated workflows) and expand governance coverage incrementally as they validate operational benefits and refine policy definitions.
15) Contact
If you are deploying or governing systems where mistakes have real cost, Metadyne is designed for you.
Organizations operating autonomous systems in production environments face governance challenges that traditional access control and monitoring approaches cannot adequately address. Metadyne provides enforceable governance as a system property—ensuring that autonomous behavior remains bounded, auditable, and accountable.
We work with engineering teams and system architects evaluating supervisory control layers for:
  • Agentic systems with access to internal and external APIs
  • Regulated deployments requiring audit trails and explicit approvals
  • Multi-agent orchestration requiring stability constraints
  • Enterprise automation spanning trust boundaries
  • Any system where autonomous decisions have organizational consequences
Request Access
We're currently working with a limited number of design partners to validate integration patterns, refine deployment modes, and understand operational requirements across diverse organizational contexts.
metadyne.ai
Version 0.1