Cordum

Know What Your AI Agents Are Doing. Before They Do It.
The Source-Available Agent Control Plane for Governance, Safety, and Trust.

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Quickstart

One command stands up the full stack — API gateway, scheduler, safety kernel, workflow engine, context engine, dashboard, NATS, and TLS-secured Redis — with auto-generated secrets, auto-provisioned certificates, and a post-deploy smoke test that exercises a real approval workflow:

git clone https://github.com/cordum-io/cordum.git
cd cordum
./tools/scripts/quickstart.sh

Prerequisites: Docker Desktop v4+ (or Engine v20.10+ with Compose v2, ≥ 4 GB RAM allocated), Go 1.24+ (for first-run cert generation), and curl. On Windows use MSYS2 / Git Bash / WSL.

What you get at the end:

• Dashboard at http://localhost:8082 (admin / admin123).
• Gateway at http://localhost:8081 with a generated CORDUM_API_KEY in .env.
• TLS CA, server, and client keypairs under ./certs/.
• A working approval-gate workflow proven by the built-in platform_smoke.sh run.

Full walkthrough, platform notes, and troubleshooting: docs/quickstart.md.

See a 3-verdict demo

Once the stack is up, install the demo-quickstart pack and run the governance demo:

cordumctl pack install ./demo/quickstart/pack
cordumctl demo run quickstart

A single hello, operator! workflow fans out to three topics and exercises every safety-kernel decision class in under 30 seconds:

  +--------------------+--------------------------+--------------------+---------
  | Step               | Topic                    | Verdict            | Reason
  +--------------------+--------------------------+--------------------+---------
  | greet              | job.demo-quickstart.greet           | ALLOW              | Safe…
  | attempt_delete     | job.demo-quickstart.delete-all      | DENY               | Block…
  | escalate_admin     | job.demo-quickstart.admin           | REQUIRE_APPROVAL   | Sign…
  +--------------------+--------------------------+--------------------+---------

Full walkthrough, rule-by-rule explanation, and extension recipe: demo/quickstart/README.md.

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The Problem: The Agent Risk Gap

Enterprises are rushing to deploy Autonomous AI Agents, but they're hitting a wall of risk. According to Gartner, 74% of enterprises see AI agents as a new attack vector, and over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled due to inadequate risk controls.

The current landscape leaves teams with a choice:

1. Restrict agents to simple, low-value read-only tasks.
2. Accept the risk of autonomous agents taking destructive, unmonitored actions.

Without a dedicated governance layer, you're flying blind:

• No visibility: You don't know what your agents are doing until after they do it.
• No safety rails: There's no way to intercept dangerous operations before they execute.
• No human-in-the-loop: Sensitive actions happen without manual oversight.
• No audit trail: When things go wrong, you can't reconstruct the chain of thought.

The Solution: Cordum Agent Control Plane

Cordum is an Agent Control Plane that provides a deterministic governance layer for probabilistic AI minds. It allows you to define, enforce, and audit the behavior of your Autonomous AI Agents across any framework or model.

graph TB
    subgraph CP [AGENT CONTROL PLANE]
        direction LR
        G[API Gateway] --- S[Scheduler] --- SK[Safety Kernel]
        S --- WE[Workflow Engine]
    end
    
    subgraph AGENTS [AUTONOMOUS AGENT POOLS]
        direction LR
        A1[Financial Ops]
        A2[Data Science]
        A3[Customer Service]
    end
    
    CP -->|Governed Jobs| AGENTS
    AGENTS -->|Audit Trail| CP

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Governance Across the Lifecycle

Cordum's Before/During/Across framework provides exhaustive control over your agent operations:

graph LR
    subgraph BEFORE [1. BEFORE - Governance]
        P[Policy Evaluation] --> S[Safety Gating]
        S --> H[Human Approval]
    end
    subgraph DURING [2. DURING - Safety]
        M[Real-time Monitoring] --> C[Circuit Breakers]
        C --> A[Live Approvals]
    end
    subgraph ACROSS [3. ACROSS - Observability]
        F[Fleet Health] --> T[Audit Trail]
        T --> O[Optimization]
    end
    BEFORE --> DURING
    DURING --> ACROSS

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• BEFORE (Governance): Define declarative policies that evaluate job requests before an agent executes. Trigger safety kernel checks, throttle risky actions, or flag operations for human approval.
• DURING (Safety): Real-time visibility into active agent runs. Monitor progress, handle step-level approvals, and enforce timeouts or circuit breakers on the fly.
• ACROSS (Observability): Manage your entire fleet from a single control plane. Aggregate audit trails, track capability-based routing, and observe agent pool health in real-time.

Quickstart

First Time?

Goal	Path
Just want to try it?	./tools/scripts/quickstart.sh — one-command install from source (guide)
Run the full stack from pre-built images?	docker compose pull && docker compose up -d (below) — once release images ship to ghcr.io
Developing Cordum?	See Development

Prerequisites

• Docker Desktop v4+ or Docker Engine v20.10+ with the Compose v2 plugin (≥ 4 GB RAM allocated to Docker).
• jq (recommended, for parsing API responses).

Run the published images

git clone https://github.com/cordum-io/cordum.git
cd cordum
export CORDUM_API_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
export REDIS_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -hex 16)
docker compose pull         # pulls every Cordum service from ghcr.io
docker compose up -d        # starts the stack — no source build needed

Dashboard: http://localhost:8082 Login: admin / admin123 (change in .env → CORDUM_ADMIN_PASSWORD)

Pin a specific release by exporting CORDUM_VERSION=1.2.3 before docker compose pull. Defaults to :latest, which only moves on stable release tags (pre-release suffixes such as -rc.1 never promote :latest).

Verifying image signatures

Every release-tag image is signed with cosign keyless OIDC. Verify before deploying to production:

cosign verify ghcr.io/cordum-io/cordum/api-gateway:1.2.3 \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com \
  --certificate-identity-regexp 'https://github\.com/cordum-io/cordum/\.github/workflows/docker\.yml@refs/tags/v.*'

See docs/deployment/images.md for the full image catalogue, multi-arch pull instructions, and tag policy.

Manual setup (without docker compose)

cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env: set CORDUM_API_KEY (or generate: openssl rand -hex 32)
export CORDUM_API_KEY="your-key-here"
go run ./cmd/cordumctl up
open http://localhost:8082

Deploy to Kubernetes

helm install cordum oci://ghcr.io/cordum-io/cordum/charts/cordum \
  --namespace cordum --create-namespace \
  --set secrets.apiKey=$(openssl rand -hex 32) \
  --set redis.auth.password=$(openssl rand -hex 32) \
  --set ingress.enabled=true \
  --set ingress.className=nginx \
  --set ingress.api.host=api.cordum.example.com \
  --set ingress.dashboard.host=cordum.example.com

See cordum-helm/ for the full Helm chart reference. Chart also available on Artifact Hub.

Container images (multi-arch: linux/amd64 + linux/arm64):

Image	GHCR	Docker Hub
api-gateway	ghcr.io/cordum-io/cordum/api-gateway	cordum/api-gateway
scheduler	ghcr.io/cordum-io/cordum/scheduler	cordum/scheduler
safety-kernel	ghcr.io/cordum-io/cordum/safety-kernel	cordum/safety-kernel
workflow-engine	ghcr.io/cordum-io/cordum/workflow-engine	cordum/workflow-engine
context-engine	ghcr.io/cordum-io/cordum/context-engine	cordum/context-engine
mcp	ghcr.io/cordum-io/cordum/mcp	cordum/mcp
dashboard	ghcr.io/cordum-io/cordum/dashboard	cordum/dashboard

Full catalogue, tag policy, cosign verification recipe, and multi-arch notes: docs/deployment/images.md.

Ports

Port	Service
8082	Dashboard
8081	API Gateway (HTTPS)
9080	gRPC Gateway
4222	NATS
6379	Redis
9092	Gateway Metrics
9093	Workflow Engine Health
50051	Safety Kernel (gRPC)
50400	Context Engine (gRPC)

Port conflicts? If any port is already in use, either stop the conflicting service or override ports in your .env file before starting the stack.

After Setup

# Submit a test job
curl -sS --cacert ./certs/ca/ca.crt \
  -X POST https://localhost:8081/api/v1/jobs \
  -H "X-API-Key: $CORDUM_API_KEY" -H "X-Tenant-ID: default" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"topic":"job.default","context":{"prompt":"hello"}}'

# Stop the stack
docker compose down

# View logs
docker compose logs -f api-gateway

Troubleshooting

Issue	Fix
Port already in use	docker compose down then retry, or check lsof -i :8082
Docker out of memory	Allocate at least 4 GB RAM to Docker Desktop
Can't login to dashboard	Default credentials: admin / admin123
TLS/SSL cert errors	Remove ./certs/ and re-run — certs auto-regenerate
openssl not found	Not needed — quickstart.sh auto-generates keys without it
Go build fails	Requires Go 1.24+ — check with go version
Stale config after changes	redis-cli DEL cfg:system:default then restart

For detailed troubleshooting, see docs/troubleshooting.md.

Development

The published-images path above pulls Cordum binaries from ghcr.io. Contributors who need to rebuild from source use the development override file:

make dev-up      # docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.dev.yml up -d --build
make dev-logs    # tail compose logs
make dev-down    # docker compose down

docker-compose.dev.yml re-pins every Cordum service to a local cordum/<name>:dev tag and forces the build: context, so source changes are reflected on the next --build. Upstream images (NATS, Redis) are untouched. See Makefile and docker-compose.dev.yml for full details.

Other useful contributor commands:

Command	Purpose
make build	Build every service binary into bin/ (wraps make proto first).
make build SERVICE=cordumctl	Build a single service.
make test	Run the full Go test suite.
make smoke	Quick post-deploy smoke against a running stack.

Key Features

Governance Feature	Why It Matters for Enterprise
Safety Gating	Prevents agents from executing destructive or unauthorized actions before they occur.
Output Quarantine	Automatically blocks PII leaks, secrets, or hallucinated results from reaching the client.
Human-in-the-Loop	Mandates human oversight for high-risk operations (e.g., financial transfers, prod access).
Pool Segmentation	Ensures sensitive data only reaches agents in trusted environments.
Deterministic Audit	Prove exactly why a decision was made with a full chain-of-thought audit trail.
Governance Policies	Declarative YAML-based rules that map enterprise risk to agent behavior.
Policy Simulator	Test your governance rules against historical data before rolling them out to production.

Architecture

cordum/
├── cmd/                          # Service entrypoints + CLI
│   ├── cordum-api-gateway/       # API gateway (HTTP/WS + gRPC)
│   ├── cordum-scheduler/         # Scheduler + safety gating
│   ├── cordum-safety-kernel/     # Policy evaluation
│   ├── cordum-workflow-engine/   # Workflow orchestration
│   ├── cordum-context-engine/    # Optional context/memory service
│   └── cordumctl/                # CLI
├── core/                         # Core libraries
│   ├── controlplane/             # Gateway, scheduler, safety kernel
│   ├── context/                  # Context engine implementation
│   ├── infra/                    # Config, storage, bus, metrics
│   ├── protocol/                 # API protos + CAP aliases
│   └── workflow/                 # Workflow engine
├── dashboard/                    # React UI
├── sdk/                          # SDK + worker runtime
├── cordum-helm/                  # Helm chart
├── deploy/k8s/                   # Kubernetes manifests
└── docs/                         # Documentation

Documentation

Doc	Description
System Overview	Architecture and data flow
Core Reference	Deep technical details
Docker Guide	Running with Compose
Agent Protocol	CAP bus + pointer semantics
MCP Server	MCP stdio + HTTP/SSE integration
Pack Format	How to package agent capabilities
Local E2E	Full local walkthrough
Production Guide	TLS, HA, backups, incident runbooks

Protocol: CAP — The Open Standard for Agent Governance

Cordum implements CAP (Cordum Agent Protocol), an open protocol specifically designed for distributed AI agent governance. CAP provides a unified interface for defining agent capabilities, submitting jobs, and enforcing safety policies across heterogeneous agent pools.

CAP vs. MCP: Why You Need Both

While both are essential, they solve different parts of the agent stack:

Protocol	Focus	Level	Responsibility
MCP (Model Context Protocol)	Tool Calling	Local	How a model interacts with a tool.
CAP (Cordum Agent Protocol)	Governance	Network	How an agent is governed within an enterprise.

• MCP is for within the agent — it defines how a model calls local tools.
• CAP is for above the agent — it defines the governance control plane for the entire agent fleet.

Use CAP for high-level orchestration and safety gating, and MCP inside your agents for fine-grained tool integration.

Read the full deep dive: MCP vs CAP: Why Your AI Agents Need Both Protocols

MCP Server

Cordum includes an MCP server framework with:

• Standalone stdio mode via cmd/cordum-mcp (for Claude Desktop/Code local integration)
• Gateway HTTP/SSE mode via /mcp/message and /mcp/sse (when mcp.enabled=true)

See docs/mcp-server.md for setup, auth headers, and client configuration examples.

SDK

The Go SDK makes it easy to build CAP-compatible workers:

import (
    "log"

    "github.com/cordum/cordum/sdk/runtime"
)

type Input struct {
    Prompt string `json:"prompt"`
}

type Output struct {
    Summary string `json:"summary"`
}

func main() {
    agent := &runtime.Agent{Retries: 2}

    runtime.Register(agent, "job.summarize", func(ctx runtime.Context, input Input) (Output, error) {
        // Your agent logic here
        return Output{Summary: input.Prompt}, nil
    })

    if err := agent.Start(); err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
    select {}
}

SDKs: Go (stable) | Python | Node

Integration Packs

Extend Cordum with 30+ integration packs for Slack, GitHub, AWS, Jira, Terraform, Datadog, PagerDuty, and more. Each pack is a CAP-native worker with policy-gated workflows.

Pack	Category	Description
Slack	Communication	Approval notifications and agent alerts
GitHub	DevOps	Govern agent actions on repositories
AWS	Cloud	Policy-gated cloud operations
Kubernetes	DevOps	Governed incident remediation
Terraform	DevOps	Pre-apply governance for IaC
Datadog	Monitoring	Alert-triggered governed workflows
LangChain	AI Framework	Governance for LangChain tool calls
MCP Bridge	AI Framework	Gateway governance for MCP tools

Browse all integrations →

Community

• Discord: Join the conversation
• GitHub Discussions: Ask questions
• Twitter/X: @Cordum_io
• Email: See SECURITY.md for contact details

Enterprise

Cordum Enterprise features (shipped in core, unlocked by license entitlement):

• SSO/SAML/OIDC integration + SCIM provisioning
• Advanced RBAC with role hierarchy
• SIEM export (webhook, syslog, Datadog, CloudWatch)
• Legal hold + velocity rules + agent identity
• Priority support

See docs/enterprise.md for the full entitlement matrix. The formerly separate cordum-enterprise repo was retired 2026-04-23.

Governance

Cordum follows a transparent governance model with a protocol stability pledge, maintainer structure, and clear decision-making process. See GOVERNANCE.md for details including:

• Protocol Stability: CAP v2 wire format frozen until February 2027
• Security: SECURITY.md for vulnerability reporting
• Versioning: Semantic versioning with deprecation policy

Roadmap

See ROADMAP.md for the full feature roadmap, completed milestones, and planned work.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for a detailed log of all changes by version.

Compared To

Feature	Cordum	Guardrails AI	NeMo Guardrails	Custom Middleware
Pre-execution policy engine	✅ Safety Kernel	❌ Post-generation	⚠️ Dialog rails only	⚠️ Manual
Human-in-the-loop approvals	✅ Built-in	❌	❌	⚠️ DIY
Multi-agent fleet governance	✅	❌ Single model	❌ Single model	❌
Deterministic audit trail	✅	❌	❌	⚠️ Manual
Framework agnostic	✅ Any via CAP	❌ Python only	❌ NVIDIA stack	❌
MCP governance	✅ Bridge + Gateway	❌	❌	❌

See detailed comparisons →

Contributing

We welcome contributions! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines. Check out our good first issues to get started.

License

Licensed under Business Source License 1.1 (BUSL-1.1).

• Self-host and use internally: Permitted
• Modify and contribute back: Permitted
• Offer as a competing hosted service: Not permitted
• Change Date: January 1, 2029 — automatically converts to Apache License 2.0

See LICENSE for full terms.

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