Show HN: Transient – CLI Governance layer for AI agents
TL;DR
CLI permission policy and audit layer for AI agents. Two minute installation. When an agent goes wrong the question is always the same: what did it do, was it authorised, can you prove it. Only 21% of companies have a mature governance model for autonomous agents. Transient wraps your agent process and enforces a permission policy before execution. Define what the agent is allowed to do. Anything outside that gets blocked. Every action gets a signed, tamper-evident receipt the agent can't alter. pipx install transient-trace transient-trace wrap install git curl pip uv sudo --auto-rc source ~/.zshrc transient-trace run claude Start in audit mode to see what your agent is actually doing. Switch to strict when you want to enforce. No code changes. Works with Claude, any CLI tool, anything you can wrap. Alpha. Keen to hear from anyone deploying agents in production. github.com/james-transien.
Nauti's Take
Transient solves a real ops problem: AI agents routinely exceed their intended scope, and a no-code-change audit layer is a practical, deployable answer. The catch: alpha-grade software means the security model isn't mature — a signed receipt doesn't help if the policy definitions are incomplete.
Worth testing in non-critical pipelines, but don't gate sensitive workflows on it yet.
Summary
CLI permission policy and audit layer for AI agents. Two minute installation.
When an agent goes wrong the question is always the same: what did it do, was it authorised, can you prove it. Only 21% of companies have a mature governance model for autonomous agents.
Transient wraps your agent process and enforces a permission policy before execution. Define what the agent is allowed to do.
Anything outside that gets blocked. Every action gets a signed, tamper-evident receipt the agent can't alter.
pipx install transient-trace transient-trace wrap install git curl pip uv sudo --auto-rc source ~/. zshrc transient-trace run claude Start in audit mode to see what your agent is actually doing.
Switch to strict when you want to enforce. No code changes.
Works with Claude, any CLI tool, anything you can wrap. Alpha.
Keen to hear from anyone deploying agents in production. github.
com/james-transien
Sources