# AI Agent Governance

> AI agent governance is the set of controls that keep AI agents accountable to the business: a register of what runs, boundaries on what each agent may touch, human approval of consequential actions, an audit trail of who did what, and the ability to stop any agent instantly.

- Part of: [The Sentry AI Transformation Glossary](https://sentrysolutions.ai/glossary)
- Canonical: https://sentrysolutions.ai/glossary/ai-governance

Governance has a reputation as the department of slowing things down. Applied to agents it is the opposite: it is what lets a business deploy more automation, because every deployment carries its controls with it. The companies moving fastest on AI in 2026 are mostly the ones whose boards trust the guardrails.

The practical stack is short: register, boundaries, approvals, audit, kill switch. What makes it real is coverage. Governance that applies to some agents is a policy document; governance that applies to the estate is a system.

## Related terms

- [Human-Gated Approvals](https://sentrysolutions.ai/glossary/human-gated-approvals)
- [Agent Register](https://sentrysolutions.ai/glossary/agent-register)
- [Data Residency](https://sentrysolutions.ai/glossary/data-residency)