Introduction
How Livy protects value-moving agent actions before execution.
Livy is built for teams that want AI agents to act without giving them unrestricted wallet power.
An agent may be able to propose a transfer, payment, swap, DeFi workflow, or protocol action. Livy decides whether that action is allowed before execution and records the result afterward.
The Problem
A wallet key is not a permission model.
Agents can make useful decisions quickly, but a value-moving action still needs checks that should live outside the agent's local prompt or tool code:
- which wallet the action is allowed to use
- which asset and network are in scope
- how much value can move per action or per day
- whether the route, destination, signer, or protocol is allowed
- whether the quote, evidence, or request context is fresh enough
- whether the final transaction matches the approved bundle
- whether execution produced a receipt
Livy gives those checks a backend-owned control point.
The Livy Model
Livy turns an agent action into a governed request:
agent intent -> MCP request -> wallet match -> guardrail decision -> approved execution -> receiptThe agent can ask. Livy decides. Execution only counts as protected when the approved request and final receipt are linked.
Core Objects
- Agent wallet: the public wallet profile Livy matches against incoming MCP requests.
- Guardrail: the policy limits and checks that decide whether a request can be approved.
- Runtime API key: the scoped secret the agent uses to call Livy from server-side code.
- MCP endpoint: the protected tool surface agents use to list, prepare, authorize, execute, and check actions.
- Approval nonce: a short-lived authorization for one exact action bundle.
- Receipt: the execution record that proves what happened after approval.
Product Boundary
Livy does not replace your agent framework, model, wallet provider, or product backend.
Livy sits at the value-moving boundary. It gives your system a place to define policy, enforce it before execution, and inspect the action trail afterward.