ACP Governance

Governance rules constrain agent behavior at the protocol level. They prevent runaway costs, detect dead agents, require minimum participation, and enforce approval workflows.

Budget

Hard limit on total cost per protocol run.

governance:
  budget:
    max_cost: 10.00    # USD — hard stop when reached
    warn_at: 0.8       # warn at 80% ($8.00)

When an agent’s accumulated cost hits max_cost, it stops. The warn_at threshold triggers a warning event that the Queen (or monitoring system) can act on.

Colony enforces budgets at the platform level — even if an agent ignores governance, Colony tracks D1 spend and hard-stops at the limit.

Heartbeat

Detect and handle dead agents automatically.

governance:
  heartbeat:
    interval_ms: 30000         # send heartbeat every 30s
    dead_after_ms: 60000       # considered dead after 60s silence
    auto_release_claims: true  # release claims when agent dies

When an agent’s heartbeat expires:

1. Agent is marked as dead
2. If auto_release_claims: true, all its claims are released
3. Other agents can claim the freed resources
4. A heartbeat.expired event is published

This is how ACP achieves self-healing — dead agents don’t hold locks forever.

Quorum

Require minimum agent participation for decisions.

governance:
  quorum:
    min_agents: 2

Phase transitions, votes, and other collective decisions require at least min_agents participating agents. Prevents a single agent from driving decisions.

Approval gates

Require specific roles to approve actions before they proceed.

governance:
  approval:
    required_for: [deploy, release]
    approvers: [lead, architect]

When an agent attempts a governed action (deploy, release), it’s held until an approver signs off. Approvers are identified by role — any agent with the lead or architect role can approve.

Escalation

Define automatic responses to governance events.

governance:
  escalation:
    on_budget_warn: notify       # publish warning event
    on_agent_death: redistribute # redistribute claims
    on_quorum_loss: pause        # pause coordination

Trigger	Actions
on_budget_warn	notify, pause, halt
on_agent_death	redistribute, notify, spawn_replacement
on_quorum_loss	pause, halt, notify
on_timeout	escalate, halt

Real-world example

A production code review protocol with full governance:

governance:
  budget:
    max_cost: 5.00
    warn_at: 0.8
  heartbeat:
    interval_ms: 30000
    dead_after_ms: 60000
    auto_release_claims: true
  quorum:
    min_agents: 2
  approval:
    required_for: [merge]
    approvers: [lead]
  escalation:
    on_budget_warn: notify
    on_agent_death: redistribute

This protocol:

• Stops at $5.00 total cost
• Warns at $4.00
• Detects dead agents within 60 seconds
• Releases dead agents’ file claims automatically
• Requires 2+ agents for review decisions
• Requires a lead to approve merges
• Redistributes work when an agent dies