---
title: "What is Governance in Tale?"
description: "Tale Governance holds agent actions behind approval cards, writes every decision to the audit log, and filters PII and unsafe content in both directions."
---
Governance

# What is Governance in Tale?

Governance is the seam between agent initiative and human judgement: approval cards hold actions until someone decides, every decision lands in the audit log, and spend stays visible — without a separate approver inbox.

> Animated demo: an agent asks to publish three knowledge entries captured from a thread; a person approves, and the decision lands in the audit log.

## How governance holds the line

Approve before actions ship, audit every run, compare models honestly, and keep agents inside your rules.

01 Automations

### Every gated run leaves a log

A nightly access review runs on schedule and alerts #security on new admin grants — every execution numbered in the same journal approvals write to.

> Animated demo: a scheduled access review checks permission changes each night and alerts the #security channel when new admin grants appear.

02 Arena

### Compare before you commit

Policy-sensitive wording is exactly where models disagree. Arena drafts the same reply twice so the safer version ships.

> Animated demo: two models draft the same access-exception reply side by side, so the safer wording ships.

03 Agents

### Agents stay inside budgets and tools

Spend controls and tool grants travel with each agent — governance is not a separate bolt-on.

> Animated demo: agents carrying spend controls and tool grants — Policy Agent, Audit Agent, Budget Agent, Access Agent, and Exceptions Agent.

04 Knowledge

### Cite what policy allowed the reply

Grounded answers show the policy and runbook sources so auditors can follow the same trail.

> Animated demo: the policy corpus auditors can open — the AI-usage policy, the trust page crawl, a data-handling entry, and the model risk register.

## What does governance cover?

Put a human in the loop where it matters — with an audit trail, budget controls, and filters that keep sensitive data out of prompts and replies.

- 01In-chat approval cardsPlans, document writes, knowledge writes, integration calls, MCP tools, and workflow runs pause until approve or reject.[Approval concepts](https://tale.dev/docs/platform/approvals/concepts)
- 02Suggest changes on integrationsDescribe what is wrong; the agent revises the call instead of abandoning the work.[Approval concepts](https://tale.dev/docs/platform/approvals/concepts)
- 03Audit trailEach decision records actor, action, and timestamp. Resolved cards stay in the transcript.[Audit logs](https://tale.dev/docs/platform/admin/governance/audit-logs)
- 04Guardrails and policiesOrg-level guardrails and the run-code policy set the limits on what agents may attempt — before a card ever appears.[Guardrails](https://tale.dev/docs/platform/admin/governance/guardrails)
- 05PII filtered in both directionsEvery chat message passes content safety, PII detection, and an optional moderation provider — on the way in and the way out. Matches block, mask, or flag; the matched text itself is never stored.[Guardrails](https://tale.dev/docs/platform/admin/governance/guardrails)
- 06Usage visibilityUsage analytics and budgets keep model spend visible to Admins.

## Governance FAQ

### What is Governance in Tale?

### Is there a separate approval inbox?

### Can I choose which actions require approval?

### Can agents send email without approval?

### How does Tale help with GDPR and PII?

## Related modules

- [AutomationsTyped workflows with triggers and approvals.](https://tale.dev/platform/automations)
- [ProjectsShared workspaces where agents pick up tasks.](https://tale.dev/platform/projects)
- [AgentsOrchestrate Claude Code, Codex, Hermes, and OpenClaw.](https://tale.dev/platform/agents)
- [ChatsEveryday AI with citations, tools, and Arena.](https://tale.dev/platform/chat)

## Read the docs

- [Approval concepts](https://tale.dev/docs/platform/approvals/concepts)
- [Configure approvals](https://tale.dev/docs/platform/approvals/configure)
- [Approvals in workflows](https://tale.dev/docs/platform/automations/approvals-in-workflows)
- [Audit logs](https://tale.dev/docs/platform/admin/governance/audit-logs)
- [Guardrails](https://tale.dev/docs/platform/admin/governance/guardrails)

## See Tale on your stack

Book a guided demo or talk to the team about self-hosted deployment, pricing, and hardware.