마이크로소프트, AI 에이전트 행동 제어 위한 새로운 오픈소스 표준 공개

As AI agents grow ever more capable, enterprises racing to put them to work across applications, workflows, and products face a new challenge: ensuring an agent does what it's supposed to do when it's deployed across different environments. Microsoft is trying to solve this problem with a new open-source standard called Agent Control Specification , or ACS, that aims to give developers a more consistent and granular way to control what AI agents are allowed to do. The specification essentially lets developer, compliance, and security teams define their own policies for agents to follow. The rules can define what the agent may do, what it must not do, when a human should approve an action, and what evidence should be logged for later review. These policy files are checked at several "interception points" when the agent is off performing a task to make sure it stays within the guardrails. The spec comes as developers are improvising ways to control what their AI sees and does, especially with conversations focusing on AI workflows going wrong due to tool misuse , or unintended actions that result in cascading failures. Today, developers might specify instructions in a system prompt, add custom checks in the application code, or use classifiers to catch problematic inputs and outputs. Those approaches work, but they often leave companies with fragmented controls that are hard to audit and harder to reuse across different frameworks, interfaces, and systems. ACS aims to integrate those controls into a common governance layer. Microsoft says the specification can be used to check whether an agent is sticking to guardrails at multiple points in its workflow — before it receives input, before it calls a tool, after a tool returns a result, and before the final response is sent to the user. A policy may allow an action, block it, redact sensitive information, or even ask a person to approve it. Developers can also insert classifiers for inputs and outputs to categorize information, predict outcomes, or determine how an agent should respond; add LLMs with prompts to act as a "judge" for policies; and logic for checking tool calls, tool selection, input accuracy, output usage, and responses. And because these policies can be written as single files, they can be bundled with agents, allowing a security policy to follow an agent across different frameworks and environments. ACS is shipping as an SDK with plugins for LangChain, the OpenAI Agents SDK, the Anthropic Agents SDK, AutoGen, CrewAI, Semantic Kernel, Microsoft.Extensions.AI, MCP tools, and more. Topics Agent Control Specification , AI , AI agents , AI governance , Microsoft When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission . This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Ram Iyer Editor Ram is a financial and tech reporter and editor. He covered North American and European M&A, equity, regulatory news and debt markets at Reuters and Acuris Global, and has also written about travel, tourism, entertainment and books. You can contact or verify outreach from Ram by emailing ram.iyer@techcrunch.com . View Bio June 18 Los Angeles Get an inside look at what it takes to scale and succeed from leaders at Mach Industries, Founders Fund, and Shinkei Systems. Through candid fireside chats and high-impact networking, you'll walk away with valuable insights and new connections. REGISTER NOW Most Popular ‘What a joke': GitHub Copilot's new token-based billing spurs consternation among devs Lucas Ropek I put Google's 24/7 AI assistant Gemini Spark to work, and it's actually pretty useful Sarah Perez Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket explodes during testing in Florida Sean O'Kane Anthropic releases Opus 4.8 with new ‘dynamic workflow' tool Russell Brandom Google engineer charged with insider trading after making $1.2M on Polymarket Amanda Silberling Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions, with more to come, including AI plans Sarah Perez Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis Julie Bort