Agent Sprawl
Definition
Agent sprawl is the uncontrolled accumulation of AI agents across a business, built, bought, embedded in SaaS, or wired up personally, each in its own console with its own access and its own bill, with no single place where they are all listed, measured or governed.
It is the successor to the shadow IT problem of the 2010s, with one upgrade that changes the risk class: SaaS tools held data, agents act. An unlisted SaaS tool is a compliance gap. An unlisted agent is an unsupervised employee.
Sprawl resists detection because agents arrive through legitimate doors: a feature flag in the CRM, a per-seat AI add-on, an engineer's side project. The remedy is not better network monitoring, it is registration: an estate-wide list of what runs, who owns it and what it may touch, which is the first function of an agent management platform.
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