Aegis Governance Specification

Aegis is an open-source governance specification and software framework designed specifically for regulating AI agents within software development environments. It was developed to address the lack of structured, machine-parseable contracts for AI agents, replacing human-readable markdown files with schema-validated JSON policy files. The system allows developers to define constitution, governance, and role boundaries that are deterministically parsed by AI tools to ensure compliance with quality standards and safety protocols.

The project originated in the United States as an open-source initiative. It provides a shared operating contract that defines what paths an agent can touch, its level of autonomy, and coordination protocols for multi-agent workflows. The repository and specification are maintained as a community-driven standard under the Apache-2.0 license, ensuring its availability as a vendor-neutral infrastructure for the evolving AI development ecosystem.