· Security/ What stops it

Invariant

Invariant is a security option for building AI agents. Policy engine and analyzer for agent traces and MCP tool calls.

Open source · freemium · can be self-hosted · SDKs for Python · by Invariant Labs · verified 2026-08-21

Official docsAdd to a stackAll security options
· When to reach for it/ Fit
  • You are choosing a security component — what stops it.
  • You need to run it on your own infrastructure, or your procurement process requires source access.
  • Within security, it does one specific job: policy & topic control.
· Invariant vs the alternatives/ 16 others
OptionWhat it doesLicenceSelf-host
InvariantPolicy engine and analyzer for agent traces and MCP tool calls.Open sourceYes
NeMo GuardrailsNVIDIA's programmable rails — constrain topic, dialogue path and tool use.Open sourceYes
Llama GuardOpen-weight classifier for input and output safety. Runs wherever you run it.Open sourceYes
Guardrails AIDeclarative input/output validators with a hub of prebuilt checks.Open sourceYes
Lakera GuardPrompt-injection and jailbreak detection as a low-latency API call.ProprietaryNo
RebuffOpen-source prompt-injection detector with canary tokens.Open sourceYes
Descope Agentic IdentityIdentity, delegated consent and scoped tokens for agents acting on behalf of users.ProprietaryNo
Auth0 for AI AgentsToken vault, async user approval and fine-grained authorization for tool calls.ProprietaryNo
OsoAuthorization-as-a-service — decide what this agent may touch, per record.Open sourceYes
Microsoft PresidioPII detection and redaction before text ever reaches a model provider.Open sourceYes
Cloudflare AI GatewayRate limiting, caching, spend caps and logging in front of any provider.ProprietaryNo
iron-proxyDefault-deny egress firewall for untrusted workloads. The sandbox holds worthless proxy tokens; real credentials are swapped in at the boundary.Open sourceYes
gVisorGoogle's user-space kernel. Intercepts syscalls before they reach the host, without paying for a full VM.Open sourceYes
FirecrackerAWS microVMs — a separate Linux kernel per sandbox, booting in about 125ms.Open sourceYes
Kata ContainersMicroVM isolation behind the ordinary container API — drops into Kubernetes as a RuntimeClass.Open sourceYes
No isolation (host process)The agent runs as an ordinary process on the host. Honest default only when it executes no code and reads nothing untrusted.Open sourceYes
E2BFirecracker sandboxes for running code the agent wrote, safely.Open sourceYes
· For agents/ This page, machine-readable

Every page here answers to Accept: text/markdown and returns the same content at roughly a tenth the tokens. No separate site, no toggle — same URL.

curl -s -H "Accept: text/markdown" https://newagent.build/c/invariant