Agent Management Overview

Field	Value
Document ID	ASCEND-AGENT-004
Version	1.0.0
Last Updated	December 19, 2025
Author	Ascend Engineering Team
Publisher	OW-KAI Technologies Inc.
Classification	Enterprise Client Documentation
Compliance	SOC 2 CC6.1/CC6.2, PCI-DSS 7.1/8.3, HIPAA 164.312, NIST 800-53 AC-2/SI-4

Reading Time: 8 minutes | Skill Level: Beginner

Introduction

ASCEND provides enterprise-grade management for AI agents operating in your organization. Every agent must be registered, configured, and monitored before it can execute governed actions.

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                      AGENT MANAGEMENT ARCHITECTURE                           │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                                                                              │
│   ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐   │
│   │                         AGENT REGISTRY                               │   │
│   │                                                                       │   │
│   │   ┌───────────────┐  ┌───────────────┐  ┌───────────────┐           │   │
│   │   │  Agent        │  │  Agent        │  │  Agent        │           │   │
│   │   │  Registration │  │  Lifecycle    │  │  Versions     │           │   │
│   │   │               │  │               │  │               │           │   │
│   │   │ • agent_id    │  │ • draft       │  │ • 1.0.0       │           │   │
│   │   │ • type        │  │ • pending     │  │ • 1.0.1       │           │   │
│   │   │ • org_id      │  │ • active      │  │ • 1.1.0       │           │   │
│   │   │ • policies    │  │ • suspended   │  │ • rollback    │           │   │
│   │   └───────────────┘  └───────────────┘  └───────────────┘           │   │
│   │                                                                       │   │
│   └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘   │
│                                     │                                        │
│                    ┌────────────────┼────────────────┐                       │
│                    │                │                │                       │
│                    ▼                ▼                ▼                       │
│   ┌─────────────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────────────┐         │
│   │   Health Monitor    │  │ Kill-Switch │  │   Anomaly Detect    │         │
│   │                     │  │             │  │                     │         │
│   │ • Heartbeat         │  │ • BLOCK     │  │ • Rate anomaly      │         │
│   │ • Performance       │  │ • UNBLOCK   │  │ • Error rate        │         │
│   │ • Error tracking    │  │ • SUSPEND   │  │ • Risk deviation    │         │
│   │ • Auto-suspend      │  │ • < 500ms   │  │ • Auto-alert        │         │
│   └─────────────────────┘  └─────────────┘  └─────────────────────┘         │
│                                                                              │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Key Capabilities

1. Agent Registration

from ascend import AscendClient

client = AscendClient(api_key="owkai_...")

# Register a new agent
registration = client.register(
    agent_id="financial-agent-001",
    agent_name="Financial Advisor Bot",
    agent_type="supervised",
    capabilities=["database.query", "api.read"],
    metadata={
        "owner": "finance-team@company.com",
        "environment": "production"
    }
)

print(f"Registered: {registration['agent_id']}")
print(f"Trust Level: {registration['trust_level']}")

2. Lifecycle Management

Agents progress through defined lifecycle states:

State	Description	Actions Allowed
`draft`	Being configured	None
`pending_approval`	Awaiting admin review	None
`active`	Operational	Full
`suspended`	Temporarily disabled	None
`deprecated`	Scheduled removal	Read-only
`retired`	Decommissioned	None

3. Health Monitoring

Continuous monitoring with Datadog-style metrics:

Heartbeat tracking — Detect offline agents
Performance metrics — Response time, error rate
Auto-suspension — Trigger on thresholds
Anomaly detection — Behavioral deviation alerts

4. Kill-Switch

Sub-500ms emergency agent shutdown:

# Emergency stop - immediate effect
client.kill_switch(
    agent_id="compromised-agent",
    reason="Security incident detected"
)

Agent Types

ASCEND supports five agent types with different trust levels:

Type	Trust	Auto-Approve	Use Case
autonomous	Low	Risk < 40	AI making independent decisions
supervised	Medium	Risk < 30	Human-in-the-loop for high risk
advisory	High	Risk < 50	Recommendations only
mcp_server	Medium	Varies	Model Context Protocol servers
custom	Configurable	Custom	Special use cases

Type Selection Guide

                    ┌────────────────────────────────────┐
                    │       What does your agent do?      │
                    └───────────────┬────────────────────┘
                                    │
              ┌─────────────────────┼─────────────────────┐
              │                     │                     │
              ▼                     ▼                     ▼
    ┌─────────────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐
    │ Makes decisions │  │ Provides        │  │ Exposes tools   │
    │ independently   │  │ recommendations │  │ via MCP         │
    └────────┬────────┘  └────────┬────────┘  └────────┬────────┘
             │                    │                    │
             ▼                    ▼                    ▼
    ┌─────────────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐
    │   autonomous    │  │    advisory     │  │   mcp_server    │
    │                 │  │                 │  │                 │
    │ Strict limits   │  │ Relaxed limits  │  │ Tool-level      │
    │ Low risk cap    │  │ High auto-      │  │ governance      │
    │ Time windows    │  │ approve         │  │                 │
    └─────────────────┘  └─────────────────┘  └─────────────────┘

Multi-Tenant Isolation

All agents are scoped to organizations with complete isolation:

# Source: services/agent_registry_service.py:776
# Agents are ALWAYS filtered by organization_id
query = db.query(RegisteredAgent).filter(
    RegisteredAgent.organization_id == organization_id
)

Isolation guarantees:

Agent IDs unique within organization
Cross-tenant access impossible
Policies scoped to organization
Audit logs isolated

Quick Start

1. Register Agent

curl -X POST "https://pilot.owkai.app/api/agents/registry" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer owkai_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "agent_id": "my-agent-001",
    "display_name": "My First Agent",
    "agent_type": "supervised",
    "allowed_action_types": ["database.query", "api.read"],
    "auto_approve_below": 30,
    "max_risk_threshold": 80
  }'

2. Activate Agent

curl -X POST "https://pilot.owkai.app/api/agents/registry/my-agent-001/activate" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer owkai_..."

3. Start Sending Heartbeats

import time
import requests

while True:
    requests.post(
        "https://pilot.owkai.app/api/agents/health/heartbeat",
        headers={"Authorization": "Bearer owkai_..."},
        json={
            "agent_id": "my-agent-001",
            "metrics": {
                "response_time_ms": 45.2,
                "error_rate": 0.5,
                "requests_count": 1247
            }
        }
    )
    time.sleep(60)  # Every 60 seconds

4. Submit Actions

from ascend import AscendClient

client = AscendClient(
    api_key="owkai_...",
    agent_id="my-agent-001"
)

result = client.evaluate_action(
    action_type="database.query",
    resource="customers",
    parameters={"query": "SELECT * FROM users LIMIT 10"}
)

if result.execution_allowed:
    # Proceed with action
    pass

API Endpoints

Endpoint	Method	Description
`/api/agents/registry`	POST	Register agent
`/api/agents/registry`	GET	List agents
`/api/agents/registry/{id}`	GET	Get agent details
`/api/agents/registry/{id}`	PUT	Update agent
`/api/agents/registry/{id}/activate`	POST	Activate agent
`/api/agents/registry/{id}/suspend`	POST	Suspend agent
`/api/agents/health/heartbeat`	POST	Send heartbeat
`/api/agents/health/summary`	GET	Health dashboard
`/api/agents/control/block`	POST	Kill-switch

Compliance

Agent management meets enterprise compliance requirements:

Standard	Requirement	Implementation
SOC 2 CC6.1	Access control	Agent registration
SOC 2 CC6.2	Authorization	Activation approval
SOC 2 CC7.1	Monitoring	Health tracking
NIST AC-2	Account management	Lifecycle states
NIST IR-4	Incident handling	Kill-switch
PCI-DSS 8.3	Identity management	Agent registry
HIPAA 164.308	Security incidents	Auto-suspend

Best Practices

Use descriptive agent IDs — Include team, purpose, environment
Set appropriate type — Don't use autonomous for supervised tasks
Configure thresholds — Tune risk thresholds to your use case
Enable heartbeats — Critical for health monitoring
Plan for incidents — Test kill-switch procedures

Next Steps

Agent Registry — Detailed registration guide
Lifecycle Management — State transitions
Trust Levels — Agent type deep dive
Health Monitoring — Metrics and alerts
Kill-Switch — Emergency procedures

Document Version: 1.0.0 | Last Updated: December 2025

Introduction​

Architecture​

Key Capabilities​

1. Agent Registration​

2. Lifecycle Management​

3. Health Monitoring​

4. Kill-Switch​

Agent Types​

Type Selection Guide​

Multi-Tenant Isolation​

Quick Start​

1. Register Agent​

2. Activate Agent​

3. Start Sending Heartbeats​

4. Submit Actions​

API Endpoints​

Compliance​

Best Practices​

Next Steps​