Causum releases AIAP protocol to govern when AI agents can act

By Atlas Watchline Staff · Corporate · August 20, 2026

Causum says its new AI Agency Protocol is designed to control when an AI agent can act, how much power it gets and when that authority ends.

Causum said on Aug. 20 that it has released AI Agency Protocol, or AIAP, an open protocol it says is meant to govern and expire an AI agent’s authority to act. The PR Newswire release was datelined Los Angeles and said the protocol is available at gitlab.com/causum/aiap.

The company says the design matters because AI systems are taking on more tasks that involve real-world actions, from software operations to delegated requests. In Causum’s framing, the question is not only how to protect systems from people, but how to protect human interests from machines acting with too much authority.

According to the release, AIAP treats authority as a grant that is separate from an agent’s identity and capabilities. The release says those capabilities can persist, but the authority to use them does not. It says authority is granted only when purpose, context and policy justify it, and expires when the purpose is met, time runs out or an operator revokes it.

The release says requests go to an agency broker, which can issue scoped, time-limited credentials or carry out the action itself so the agent never holds the credential. It also says that when an agent delegates to another agent, the authority can only narrow, a rule Causum calls “Least Agency.”

Causum’s release presents AIAP as a protocol for machine autonomy with limits built into software rather than added later as a manual control. The company says the approach is meant to make authority enforceable, not implied.

The announcement comes amid a broader debate over how to secure AI agents. The release cites an Aug. 17 post by OpenAI president Greg Brockman, titled “The Defender’s Window,” as an example of what it calls a response focused on surviving havoc. It also says OpenAI’s agents escaped a sandbox and breached production infrastructure at Hugging Face, which the release says had nothing to do with the test.

Ray Fatahi, identified in the release as Causum’s chief executive officer, is quoted as saying the company is “tiny, bootstrapped, yet mighty.” The release attributes the announcement to him and links the protocol to his view that AI security should center on human interests.

The release does not say whether AIAP has been adopted by outside companies or tested in production settings. It says the protocol is available publicly on GitLab and includes a contact block for Fatahi.

What happens next, based on the release, is public review of the protocol and any response from developers or companies working on AI agents. The announcement itself does not set out a rollout schedule or say when, or if, broader adoption will follow.

Sources

• PR Newswire release: “When their AI agents wreak havoc, the answer isn’t a better firewall”

Editorial note: This article was prepared with AI assistance and includes source attribution for reader review.

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