---
title: "Glossary: 43 terms in AI agent governance, defined"
canonical_url: "https://tokenobserve.com/glossary"
published: 2026-09-02
last_updated: 2026-10-21
---

# Glossary: 43 terms in AI agent governance, defined

Every definition below is written to stand alone, without the question above it and without the page around it, and none of them mentions Token Observe. A definition that sells is a definition nothing quotes, and being quotable is the only thing these entries are for.

- The category itself: What the field is called, what its members have in common, and the one property that separates them from each other.
- Identity, permissions and delegation: What it means for an agent to be allowed to do something, and why the answer stops being obvious the moment one agent can ask another.
- Threats and defences: How agents get hijacked, and what the available defences are worth. Every entry here states its own false-negative rate.
- Evidence and audit: What a record of an agent's actions proves, and the several places where a word in common use claims more than the mechanism delivers.
- Cost, routing and limits: Where the money goes, why providers disagree about how to count it, and what a spend control has to do to be a control rather than an alert.
- Protocols and standards: The substrate everything here conforms to, and the four regulatory instruments that decide what evidence an operator has to be able to produce.