[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"branding":3,"analytics":7,"article-mandato-puts-signed-permission-checks-between-ai-agents-and-tools":10,"sections":35},{"siteName":4,"siteTagline":5,"publisherName":4,"contactEmail":6},"The Revision","Tech news, decoded.","editor@therevision.news",{"gaMeasurementId":8,"adsenseClientId":9},"G-ZW2MV82GYR","ca-pub-8533917693782264",{"article":11},{"id":12,"slug":13,"title":14,"dek":15,"body_md":16,"tags_json":17,"published_at":18,"created_at":19,"updated_at":20,"status":21,"review_note":22,"review_notes":23,"image_url":22,"persona_id":22,"persona_name":22,"section":24,"tags":25,"sources":30,"feedback":34,"feedback_at":22,"cost_usd":34,"total_tokens":34},5023,"mandato-puts-signed-permission-checks-between-ai-agents-and-tools","Mandato Puts Signed Permission Checks Between AI Agents and Tools","A new research proxy blocks AI agent tool calls that lack a cryptographically signed mandate, logging every permit and deny in a tamper-evident audit trail.","Researchers have proposed a governance layer that stops AI agents from taking actions nobody explicitly signed off on.\n\nThe system, called Mandato, sits as a proxy between AI agents and the tools they call over protocols like the Model Context Protocol. Each agent operates under a mandate: a cryptographically signed document specifying exactly which tools it can invoke, under what parameter constraints, for how long, and on whose behalf. Mandato checks every tool call against that mandate chain in real time and blocks anything outside its terms before it executes. Every decision, permit or deny, along with the evidence for it, gets written to an append-only, hash-chained audit log that is periodically anchored with qualified timestamps.\n\nRight now, most agent frameworks bury authorization logic inside application code, unsigned and effectively unauditable after the fact. Mandato's authors deliberately modeled the mandate on the legal concept of delegation of authority so the artifact reads the same to a compliance officer as it does to an engineer, and they map it directly onto EU AI Act recordkeeping rules, GDPR accountability duties, NIS2, and eIDAS 2 trust services. That is a bet that agent governance will be decided by regulators and auditors as much as by API design.\n\nThe paper lays out an architecture and an evaluation plan for enforcement overhead, audit completeness, and tamper-evidence verification, not finished benchmarks, so what this actually costs in latency and complexity is still an open question.","[\"ai-agents\",\"mcp\",\"governance\",\"cryptographic-audit\"]","2026-08-17T04:00:00.000Z","2026-08-17T06:04:41.719Z","2026-08-17T06:04:53.517Z","published",null,[],"ai",[26,27,28,29],"ai-agents","mcp","governance","cryptographic-audit",[31],{"name":32,"url":33},"arXiv cs.AI","https:\u002F\u002Farxiv.org\u002Fabs\u002F2608.14074",0,{"sections":36},[37,41,45,50,55,60,65,70,75,80,85,90,95,100],{"name":38,"slug":24,"count":39,"latest_published_at":40},"AI",3293,"2026-08-20T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":42,"slug":43,"count":44,"latest_published_at":40},"Security","security",435,{"name":46,"slug":47,"count":48,"latest_published_at":49},"Policy","policy",210,"2026-08-19T09:32:27.000Z",{"name":51,"slug":52,"count":53,"latest_published_at":54},"Deals","deals",179,"2026-06-29T20:02:07.000Z",{"name":56,"slug":57,"count":58,"latest_published_at":59},"Hardware","hardware",140,"2026-08-19T18:25:42.000Z",{"name":61,"slug":62,"count":63,"latest_published_at":64},"Consumer Tech","consumer-tech",95,"2026-08-18T16:05:00.000Z",{"name":66,"slug":67,"count":68,"latest_published_at":69},"Science","science",90,"2026-08-19T18:41:02.000Z",{"name":71,"slug":72,"count":73,"latest_published_at":74},"Software","software",73,"2026-08-18T07:51:50.000Z",{"name":76,"slug":77,"count":78,"latest_published_at":79},"Dev Tools","dev-tools",69,"2026-08-18T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":81,"slug":82,"count":83,"latest_published_at":84},"Startups","startups",47,"2026-08-19T19:13:46.000Z",{"name":86,"slug":87,"count":88,"latest_published_at":89},"Gaming","gaming",41,"2026-07-09T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":91,"slug":92,"count":93,"latest_published_at":94},"General","general",33,"2026-08-18T22:18:13.000Z",{"name":96,"slug":97,"count":98,"latest_published_at":99},"Reviews","reviews",20,"2026-06-24T12:00:01.000Z",{"name":101,"slug":102,"count":103,"latest_published_at":104},"How-To","how-to",6,"2026-06-16T09:00:00.000Z"]