Signals that wake agents
Let a ticket-volume spike or an output-drift finding start an agent run with the signal attached, debounced, within a daily budget, and through approval by default.
- Wake an agent when tickets spike in a category
- Wake an agent when an agent's output drifts
- Keep woken runs debounced, budgeted and approved
A spike in tickets, or an agent whose answers have drifted, usually needs someone to look into it. A wake rule lets the signal start an agent that does, for example a problem-management agent with the cluster of tickets attached, instead of only raising an alert.
Wake rules
PUT /api/governance/signal-wakes/{name} (agents.update and Cedar update on the agent):
{
"source": "sentinel",
"agent": "problem-manager",
"match": {"min_severity": "high", "prefix": "category:Network"},
"input": "Tickets are spiking. Find the common cause and draft a problem record.\n\n{signal}",
"debounce_s": 3600,
"max_runs_per_day": 5,
"budget_usd_per_day": 10,
"require_approval": true
}| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
source | sentinel, the ticket-volume spike detector, or drift, the output drift check |
match | min_severity (sentinel: warning, high (default) or critical; drift: warning (default) or critical), prefix of the spike's signature (category:Network, code:E-*), and for drift the metric and watched_agent |
input | What the agent is told. {signal} is replaced by the signal as JSON: the spike's count, its baseline and up to 20 ticket ids, or the drift metric and its score |
debounce_s | The same signal does not wake the agent again within this many seconds (default 3600) |
max_runs_per_day | At most this many wakes per UTC day (default 5) |
budget_usd_per_day | Optional. No wake once the agent has spent this much today |
require_approval | Default true: the wake is filed in the approvals queue and the run starts only when a person approves it. When it is approved, the rule is read again; if it was deleted, disabled or now names another agent, the approval is refused |
GET /api/governance/signal-wakes lists the rules; DELETE removes one.
The run
A woken run goes through the same governed path as a scheduled run, under the trigger name signal:<rule>. It is leased, can resume after a crash, and appears in that trigger's run list. Its tools are gated by the agent's postures, policies and autonomy level like any other run.
Audit events
agent.signal_wake.saved, agent.signal_wake.deleted, agent.signal_wake.proposed, agent.signal_wake.started, agent.signal_wake.debounced, agent.signal_wake.over_budget.