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Governance, compliance & Cursor's control plane1 / 2

2 min lesson

Where the agent fits

Give a plain answer to "Why is separation of duties specifically the concept that AI autonomy stresses, more than, say, access management?" Then ground it in one lesson detail.

Step 1 of 2

Where the agent fits

Explain AI autonomy to a governance audience this way: the agent is an author, possibly a prolific one and authorship is the one role it can occupy. The approval gate stays human (or human-defined policy). The deploy gate stays in the pipeline. An autonomous agent that opens a PR has not violated SoDSeparation of Duties. Short for separation of duties: the rule that authoring, approving and deploying a change never sit with one person. Auditors use the acronym; the control is the same. Press Enter for the full definition.. An agent with write access that merges its own PR to production has obliterated it.

The SoD test for any AI workflow
Who authored?
Human or agent under a human's direction - fine either way
Who approved?
Must be a different identity than the author; the reviewer owns the merge
Who deployed?
Pipeline with its own controls - never the author bypassing CI
Red flag
Same identity (or unsupervised agent) spans author + approver + deploy
Say it like this

"The agent gets to be the author. It does not get to be the approver and it does not get to be the deployer. We make it a faster author, not an unaccountable one."

Interview move

When asked 'how do you govern autonomous agents?', don't reach for a feature. Reach for SoDSeparation of Duties. Short for separation of duties: the rule that authoring, approving and deploying a change never sit with one person. Auditors use the acronym; the control is the same. Press Enter for the full definition.. Say: 'Autonomy is bounded by the same separation of dutiesNo single person can author, approve and deploy the same change. The core control AI autonomy has to respect. Press Enter for the full definition. as any engineer - author, not approver, not deployer.' Then layer the features (scoped diffs, allowlists, audit logs) as how you enforce it. Concept first, features second. That sequencing is what reads as senior.