Two categories, one timeline
The difference is position on the timeline of an action. Observability sits after: traces, evals, dashboards, the autopsy. Our gate sits before: the proposal arrives, the rules resolve, the verdict returns, and only then does anything execute.
What each one answers
Observability answers: what happened, how often, how well. Governance answers: may this happen at all, under whose rules, with whose approval. An incident review needs the first. A regulator, an insurer, and a CFO need the second.
Why after is too late for actions
A wrong reply can be apologized for. A wrong wire, refund, or record change has already moved the world by the time a trace shows it. That is why our action gate is deterministic and fail-closed: under ten milliseconds, no model on the path, and if our engine cannot decide, the action dies.
They compose
Teams keep their observability stack for quality and debugging, and put our gate in front of consequence. The trace tells you the agent is drifting; our gate guarantees the drift cannot spend money. The eval tells you the model hallucinates; our gate guarantees the hallucination cannot ship.
The category is being named
Industry analysts began defining agent governance and management as its own category in 2026. The line we build on is older than the category: the check comes before the action.