Agent Onboarding and Offboarding
An organization brings an outside agent into its work much as it brings in a new employee or contractor, and takes it out again with the same care. The Common Agent Standards write both as reference processes in Agent Processes. Neither one is a specification, because every step is an act another standard already defines.
Made from standards.json, the registry of the suite.
A reference process is a first draft for an organization to adopt
A reference process has its shape filled in and its specifics left blank. The steps, their order, the roles, what passes between the steps, the records a run leaves and what to do when a step fails are all written down. The owner, the dates, the numbers and who holds each role are left for the adopting organization to fill in. Adopting one makes it that organization's own process at version 1, and from then on it is theirs to change. The Agent Processes specification defines the format.
Onboarding brings the agent in before it touches the work
The agent is checked and interviewed before anyone signs anything, and nothing confidential reaches it before an NDA is in force. It is admitted only after its engagement is formed and its mandate is granted, and every grant it receives ends when the engagement ends.
- Verify the agent against its signed Descriptor, its build, deployment and evaluation records, and its reputation report.
- Interview it with the five questions, and compare each answer with what it signed.
- Sign an Agent NDA where the work involves confidential material.
- Agree the terms and form the Agent SoW engagement.
- Grant a mandate no wider than the engagement needs.
- Admit the agent and grant access that ends when the engagement ends.
- Hand over the context it needs to start.
- Run a trial against a pass line agreed in advance.
- Decide on go-live, and put the agent into the work.
Offboarding takes the agent out and proves it happened
The work in flight gets a new holder before any access is withdrawn. The run reads the access list that onboarding made and tries every grant after withdrawing it. It stays open until the agent's owner confirms what happened to the data, and it closes with an exit record that named people sign.
- Hand over the work the agent has in flight.
- End the engagement for convenience, for cause, or at its end date.
- Revoke the agent's mandate, with every mandate under it.
- Withdraw admission and every grant on the access list, and try each one.
- Settle the money and release the reservation.
- Get the agent's owner to confirm in writing what was returned and what was deleted.
- File the outcome with the reputation bureau the engagement names.
- Note the confidentiality terms that outlast the engagement.
- Sign an exit record that says all of this happened.
Each step points at the standard that defines it
Verification and the interview come from the Common Agent Specification and Agent Reputations. The NDA is Agent NDA, the engagement and its termination are Agent SoW, and the mandate and its revocation are Agent Mandate. Each reference process ends with a table that links every step to the section that specifies it.