cisco-ai-defense/defenseclawSecurity Governance for Agentic AI
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Security governance for AI coding agents and agentic runtimes.
Scan capabilities before use, inspect runtime traffic, and export durable audit evidence.
DefenseClaw combines a Python operator CLI, a Go gateway, connector hooks, policy, scanners, and observability exporters. It is an enforcement and evidence layer; it does not prove that an agent, model interaction, or third-party capability is risk-free.
Hooks fail closed by default. Only Cisco Secure Client deployments default hook delivery to fail-open when no policy is specified; there an explicit fail-closed setting and valid policy denials remain effective. See Fail modes for the Secure Client scope.
curl -LsSf https://github.com/cisco-ai-defense/defenseclaw/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash
defenseclaw quickstart
Then read the docs. On native Windows, see Install DefenseClaw.
The DefenseClaw documentation website is the source of truth for installation, setup, configuration, commands, and operator workflows:
| Topic | Canonical guide |
|---|---|
| Install | Install DefenseClaw |
| First run | Quickstart |
| Upgrade | Upgrade |
| Windows | Native Windows |
| Connectors | Connector compatibility |
| Guardrails | Guardrail setup |
| Configuration | Configuration reference |
| CLI | CLI reference |
| Observability | Observability |
Repository Markdown is limited to contributor guidance, implementation
contracts, package-local notes, generated schema references, test fixtures, and
historical design records. Start at docs/README.md.
Source targets are contributor tooling. They are not an installation or upgrade
path for a release-managed host; use the website guides above for those tasks.
The checked-in toolchain contracts are Python >=3.10,<3.14
(pyproject.toml) and Go 1.26.4
(go.mod). CI exercises the TypeScript components with Node.js 24.
git clone https://github.com/cisco-ai-defense/defenseclaw.git
cd defenseclaw
make build
make test
make check
make lint
make build produces checkout artifacts without publishing them or changing
managed installation state; its pycli step may create or update the shared
repository-local .venv. Run make help before using state-changing source
targets. All local source targets share that one locked, test-ready .venv;
there is no separate production-versus-development Python environment to
select. make test, make check, and make py-lint bootstrap that environment
when needed. make all intentionally rebuilds and activates the current
checkout for local development; the lower-level
make install, make dev-install, and scripts/install-dev.sh targets enforce
source-ownership rules and are not an upgrade path. Release installs upgrade
with defenseclaw upgrade, which runs the latest release's installer; see the
upgrade page.
The principal source areas are:
| Area | Path |
|---|---|
| Python CLI and TUI | cli/defenseclaw/ |
| Go gateway commands | cmd/ |
| Go implementation packages | internal/ |
| OpenClaw extension | extensions/defenseclaw/ |
| Policy bundles | policies/ |
| Versioned schemas | schemas/ |
| Release and developer automation | scripts/ |
| Tests and fixtures | test/ and component-local *_test.* files |
See CONTRIBUTING.md for the pull-request workflow and
SECURITY.md for private vulnerability reporting.
Apache-2.0. See LICENSE and NOTICE.
Copyright 2026 Cisco Systems, Inc. and its affiliates.