Governed agent lifecycle

From agent code to governed production, and back again

Agent development does not end at deployment. An agent has to be registered as a production actor, bound to a versioned contract, evaluated before release, promoted deliberately, controlled while it runs, and continuously assessed against real production behavior.

Cogward connects those stages through one lifecycle record, so the identity, authority, policy, evidence, and outcomes of each production run inform what ships next.

This page describes the governed lifecycle as an operating model. See the capability map for what is available today, in preview, and planned.

Why it matters

The runtime closes the development loop

Because Cogward knows which version ran, under whose authority, with which tools and policies, and what happened as a result, production evidence can drive release gates, rollback, containment, and the next agent version. The loop is closed by the same runtime that governs execution, not reconstructed afterward from disconnected logs.

Preserved across every stage

The eight stages

How an agent moves into governed production, and how production shapes the next version

Teams keep their preferred framework, repository, and models. Cogward governs everything around the agent, from the moment it is declared to the decision about what ships next.

Stage 1 · Author

Build in your framework

Build the agent in the framework and repository your team already uses. Cogward does not replace the development framework.

  • Agent code & prompts
  • Models
  • Tools & MCP servers
  • Memory & state
  • Expected outcomes
  • Evaluation scenarios
Stage 2 · Register

Declare a production actor

Registration mints the agent's stable identity and creates its production contract, the binding declaration of how it is allowed to run.

  • Owner & product
  • Tenant model
  • Allowed models & tools
  • Resource ceilings
  • Data classifications
  • Policy & approval
  • Delegation limits
  • Evidence requirements
Stage 3 · Version

Bind an immutable candidate

Convert the agent and its contract into an immutable candidate version. Behavior changes without a code change, so the version binds more than a container image.

  • Code / image digest
  • Prompts
  • Model configuration
  • Tool definitions
  • Policies
  • Runtime configuration
  • Evaluation suite
  • Supply-chain provenance
Stage 4 · Qualify

Evaluate before release

Assess the candidate against expected scenarios and policy constraints. The result becomes promotion evidence rather than a test report.

  • Task success
  • Trajectory quality
  • Policy adherence
  • Tool use
  • Cost & latency
  • Unsafe behavior
  • Regressions vs previous version
Stage 5 · Promote

Release deliberately

Promote an approved version through controlled environments and tenant-specific rollout, with a rollback target ready.

  • Explicit approval
  • Release gate
  • Canary / share rollout
  • Tenant enablement
  • Tenant pinning
  • Rollback target
Stage 6 · Operate

Run under governance

Run each session with its identity, authority, state, policy, approvals, and evidence bound throughout the trajectory.

  • Durable pause & recovery
  • Governed calls
  • Credential custody
  • Human approval
  • Suspend / drain / contain / stop
  • Per-version, per-tenant attribution
Stage 7 · Evaluate

Measure real production

Measure the trajectories production actually creates, against the exact version, tenant, authority, and policy behind them.

  • Drift
  • Regressions
  • Cost per outcome
  • Policy denials
  • Tenant-specific behavior
  • Unsafe patterns
Stage 8 · Improve

Decide what ships next

Turn production evidence into a decision about the current version and the next one. Improve returns to Version for a new candidate, or to Author for deeper change.

  • Contain a tenant
  • Roll back
  • Adjust policy
  • Refine prompts
  • Change tools
  • Tune models
  • Update evaluations
  • Next candidate version

Every production run is attributable to the exact version, tenant, and authority behind it, so the evidence it generates can decide what happens next.

One production contract

Registration is where the production contract is created

The contract declared at registration is inherited by every version and enforced at runtime. It is the single reference the whole lifecycle is measured against.

Production contract
Identity Allowed models & tools Policy & approval Delegation limits Data classifications Evidence requirements
Book a technical briefing

Take an agent from your repository into governed production

Bring an agent, its deployment constraints, and the production requirements your customers are asking about. We will map them to what Cogward supports today and what can be completed together through a design-partner engagement.

Book a technical briefing