Guardrails
The Industry Conflict
Standard definitions of “Guardrails” conflate two opposing engineering concepts: architectural firewalls (deterministic) and prompt engineering (probabilistic). This ambiguity leads to agents that are “safe” but functionally paralyzed.
The ASDLC Definition
To resolve this, we map “Guardrails” to the Agent Constitution and Gates (e.g. Quality Gates, Firewalls).
Note: This is distinct from Context Gates, which act as a cognitive throttle for the context window rather than a hard compliance check for output.
The Agent Constitution is a set of probabilistic, semantic instructions acting as the model’s “internal conscience.” Unlike a firewall that passively intercepts errors, the Constitution actively steers the agent’s intent, ensuring it understands how to act correctly to avoid colliding with hard infrastructure.
Comparison of Controls
| Feature | Gates (Standard “Guardrails”) | Agent Constitution (ASDLC) |
|---|---|---|
| Nature | Deterministic (Binary) | Probabilistic (Semantic) |
| Location | External (Firewall) | Internal (Context Window) |
| Goal | Intercept failure | Steer intent |
| Analogy | The brakes on a car | The driver’s training |