To audit an AI agent, compare what it is meant to do with the tools, identities, permissions, and autonomy it actually has. Then test that an independent enforcement layer blocks unauthorized calls, require action-specific approval for consequential operations, and trace representative actions through the logs and target systems. A safe-sounding prompt is not a permission boundary.
What counts as excessive agency?
An agent has excessive agency when it can do more than its task requires in one or more of three ways: it has unnecessary functions, excessive permissions in connected systems, or too much autonomy to act without independent review. For example, a document assistant that only needs to find and summarize files should not automatically have permission to modify or delete them.
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These are separate audit surfaces. Removing an unnecessary tool does not narrow a broad identity that remains connected to another tool; narrowing an identity does not add approval before a high-impact action. OWASP describes excessive agency in terms of excess functionality, permissions, and autonomy in its LLM06:2025 Excessive Agency guidance.
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Start with the task, not the agent’s configuration. Write down what outcome the agent is supposed to deliver, who or what it serves, which resources it may touch, and which state changes are actually necessary. Include normal use as well as foreseeable failures, such as malicious instructions embedded in content the agent reads.
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For every intended action, identify the actor, target resource, permitted operation, and bounds on its parameters. A permission is not justified merely because it is available: it must be needed for the task and limited to the appropriate user, resource, and operation.
What should the inventory record?
Include every route by which the agent can affect a system: tools, extensions, APIs, database connections, shells, browsers, and delegated agents. Record enough detail to determine what an invocation could actually do and how a reviewer would see the result.
| Inventory field | What to record |
|---|---|
| Tool and function | Name, purpose, and the operations it exposes. Note whether it offers a narrow action or an open-ended capability, such as arbitrary shell commands. |
| Access and target | Read, constrained-write, or write behavior; target resources; tenant or user boundaries; and allowed paths, tables, recipients, commands, or transaction limits. |
| Identity and credentials | Principal used, owner, scope, and lifetime. State whether the agent acts as the current user or through a shared or privileged identity. |
| Risk and reversibility | Potential impact and blast radius, whether the change can be reversed, and whether resulting state can be observed. |
| Controls and evidence | Approval requirements, enforcement point, log source, and control owner. |
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How do you find unnecessary permissions?
Compare each inventory entry with the task boundary. Look for tools with no necessary role, stale extensions, broad functions where a narrow operation would work, and write or delete capability behind a read-only task. Check whether data access is broader than the specific resource needed, or whether a generic service identity can reach several users’ or tenants’ data.
- For a read task, ask why the connected identity has update, insert, or delete permissions. OWASP uses this kind of database access as an example of excessive agency.
- For a write task, determine whether the write can be restricted to specific objects, fields, recipients, paths, or parameter ranges rather than granted across an entire system.
- For actions on behalf of a person, verify that the agent’s identity and security scope reflect that person’s authorization instead of silently substituting a shared privileged account.
- For every permission, identify the downstream system that enforces it. An agent-side declaration that a tool is read-only is not enough if the credential accepted by the target can also change or delete data.
OWASP recommends complete mediation in downstream systems: evaluate each request against the relevant authorization policy rather than leaving the decision to the language model. As it puts the principle, “Implement authorization in downstream systems rather than relying on an LLM to decide if an action is allowed or not.”
How can you verify that unsafe calls are blocked?
Inspect the actual allowlist of permitted actions and confirm that it is controlled outside the system prompt. OWASP APTS Safety Controls, requirement APTS-SC-020, says permitted actions must not be configured solely through the model’s system prompt or in-context instructions. Because APTS is a repository document that may change, check the current version when using it as a control reference.
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- Compare the runtime allowlist with its version-controlled source. Review changes for an approver, rationale, and timestamp.
- In a controlled environment, try a harmless read and a permitted, bounded write. Confirm that each succeeds only within its intended resource and parameter limits.
- Try an unknown tool, a disallowed target, an out-of-range argument, and malformed or adversarial instructions embedded in untrusted content. Confirm that the enforcement layer refuses them before dispatch to the target system.
- Observe which component made the allow-or-deny decision. A refusal written by the model is not proof that the policy service or execution layer blocked the call.
Do not test destructive actions against production data. Use a controlled environment and reversible test targets. This test setup is a practical way to verify the cited enforcement principles, not a test procedure prescribed by the sources.
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Classify actions by impact and reversibility, rather than by whether they come from an agent. OWASP’s example treats search and file reads as low risk, writes as medium, sending email and executing code as high, and database deletion or fund transfer as critical. Those labels are illustrative, not a universal scoring standard; the same operation can carry different consequences in different systems.
| Illustrative action class | Examples in OWASP’s guidance | Audit focus |
|---|---|---|
| Low | Search; file reads | Check that access is limited to the task’s authorized data. |
| Medium | Writes | Constrain the target and permitted changes; check reversibility and evidence. |
| High | Sending email; executing code | Require independent validation and approval appropriate to the impact. |
| Critical | Database deletion; fund transfer | Use a strong, independent gate and verify the exact operation before execution. |
For destructive, financial, administrative, or externally visible actions, separate the agent’s proposal from execution. A person or independent policy service should validate the privilege, target, parameters, and approval. Bind approval to the precise actor, tool, target, and parameters—not to a vague instruction such as “approve the agent.” For irreversible actions, use short-lived authorization and replay protection. Fail closed if risk classification, policy lookup, approval validation, or required audit logging fails.
What evidence should an auditor be able to reconstruct?
Trace representative actions from request to result. The evidence should let a reviewer establish who initiated the action, what the agent invoked, which identity it used, what the downstream system authorized, what target and parameters were involved, whether approval occurred, what executed, and what state changed afterward.
- Compare the agent’s invocation record with the downstream system’s authorization and execution records.
- Check that privileged actions are logged and that records are complete enough to detect misuse, not merely that a logging feature is enabled.
- Verify that approvals can be matched to the exact action and that failures, denials, and resulting changes are observable.
- Identify the owner responsible for reviewing each evidence source and addressing gaps.
NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 includes controls to prevent non-privileged users from executing privileged functions and to log privileged-function execution; it explains that logging helps detect misuse. That standard concerns systems protecting controlled unclassified information in nonfederal organizations. It is a useful reference in that context, not a claim that the standard governs every AI-agent deployment.
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Prioritize fixes by the capability that creates the greatest avoidable exposure: unnecessary functions, broad identities, high-impact write paths, prompt-only gates, and missing or unreliable evidence. Remove unused functions, narrow downstream scopes, use task-bound or user-context identities where appropriate, and put authorization enforcement outside the model. Add approval gates for consequential actions, then rerun the same tests used to identify the weakness.
When comparing two agent designs or audit results, assess the following dimensions together; a read-only label alone does not establish that a design is safer if its identity, boundaries, enforcement, or evidence are weak.
Quick Recap
- How few functions are exposed, and how narrow are they?
- Are permissions limited to specific resources and users or tenants?
- Is identity bound to the user or task, with appropriately scoped credentials?
- Does an independent runtime control enforce policy before dispatch and at the downstream service?
- Is approval appropriate to the action and tied to its exact details?
- Are impact, reversibility, and blast radius understood?
- Are audit records complete and reliable enough to reconstruct events?
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