Architecture
AtlaSent is execution-time authorization infrastructure for consequential computational actions. At the moment an action is about to execute, it answers: does the organization authorize this exact action right now? Authentication establishes the caller. Tool permissions establish technical reach. Neither establishes organizational authority by itself. AtlaSent evaluates trusted assertions about the human, AI, organization, resource, and current context. The result isallow, deny, hold, or escalate; only allow can produce a bounded permit.
The flow
System components
Fail-closed design
AtlaSent is designed to fail closed. Every error path collapses to deny:
There is no fallback that allows the action when AtlaSent is unreachable. If your authorization layer can be bypassed by making it unavailable, it isn’t an authorization layer.
Policy engine
Policies are evaluated at request time against the active bundle for the action class:- First-match — rules are evaluated in order; the first matching rule’s decision is returned
- Deny-by-default — if no rule matches, the decision is
deny - Most-restrictive-wins — when multiple policy layers apply, the strictest outcome is used
Permit tokens
A permit is a single-use, time-limited cryptographic token that proves a specific action was authorized. It:- Is tied to the specific action type, actor, and resource it was issued for
- Expires after 1 hour by default
- Is consumed on first verification — cannot be re-used
- Is recorded in the audit chain on both issuance and consumption
Audit chain
Every evaluation produces an audit record. Records are:- Append-only — no UPDATE or DELETE, ever
- Hash-linked — each record contains the SHA-256 hash of the previous record
- Signed — exports are Ed25519-signed with the AtlaSent signing key
- Offline-verifiable — the full chain can be verified against the published public key without calling AtlaSent
Deployment postures
The SDK, policy format, and audit chain format are designed to be identical across all three postures.
Latency
The evaluate endpoint is designed for inline, synchronous authorization. The latency figures below are design targets, not measured guarantees:- P50 latency target: < 30ms
- P99 latency target: < 100ms
- Timeout: 10s (configurable; fail-closed on expiry)
Next steps
- Core concepts — the full concept reference
- The deploy gate step — the most common integration pattern
- AI Agent Governance — governing AI agent actions
- Self-hosting — running AtlaSent in your own infrastructure