The most important design decision in an agent platform is not the model. It is the gate.
In Conduit, every action that changes something in a system of record pauses for a named approver before it executes. Posting a journal entry, sending an email, updating a customer record. The agent prepares and proposes. A person approves and commits. Every proposal and every decision lands in an append-only audit log.
This sounds slow. It is the reason the platform can run at all.
Why the gate comes first
Enterprises do not lack AI capability. They lack a way to put it in front of a regulator, an auditor, or a risk committee and say "here is exactly what it did and who agreed to it." The gate produces that record as a by-product of doing the work.
It also changes the conversation with the people who own the process. A controller does not have to trust the model. They have to review the proposal, which is a thing they already know how to do.
Autonomy is a dial
Approval is not the end state. It is the on-ramp.
As the approval record accumulates, an action type earns a track record. Routine matches with a stable pattern and a long history of unmodified approvals can be graduated to auto-approve, one action type at a time. Still logged. Still reversible. Still visible in the same console as everything else.
Oversight becomes a dial the client turns, not a rewrite the vendor performs. And it can be turned back.
What the gate gives you
- One audit story for every agent, however many you run.
- A review process your compliance team learns once.
- A safe way to start on Monday, with real systems and real consequences, without betting the organization on a model's judgment.
The switch is not there because the agents are dangerous. It is there because the log is where trust comes from.