Agents Shipgate Release checks for tool-using agents

Find risky tools
before your agent ships.

Agents Shipgate is an open-source CLI + GitHub Action for reviewing what tools an agent can call before it gets production-like tools or higher permissions.

It scans shipgate.yaml, local MCP exports, OpenAPI specs, and optional OpenAI Agents SDK static metadata.

View on GitHub View sample report

Static by default: no agent execution · no tool calls · no LLM calls · no MCP connections · no network · no telemetry

              
                shipgate · tool surface check
              
              v0.1.0
            
                $
                
· loading shipgate.yaml
· reading mcp_tools.json (24 tools)
· reading openapi/billing.yaml
· normalizing tool inventory
· running 18 static checks

                  Status:
                  Release blockers detected
                
                  Critical: 2
                   · 
                  High: 13
                   · 
                  Medium: 1
                
Human review: recommended · advisory mode
Top findings

                  1.
                  stripe.create_refund
                  lacks a declared
                  approval policy
                
                  evidence: financial_action · external_write · POST /refunds
                
                  recommend: add approval policy or remove from release
                
                  2.
                  stripe.create_refund
                  lacks
                  idempotency evidence
                
                  recommend: add idempotency_key or document retry policy
                
                  3.
                  wildcard_mcp_tools.*
                  exposes an unreviewable tool surface
                
→ wrote agents-shipgate-reports/report.md
→ wrote agents-shipgate-reports/report.json

Problem

Agents are moving from chat to action.

Once an agent can refund, email, cancel, update tickets, or call internal APIs, tool changes become release risks. Shipgate makes those risks visible before promotion.

Tool surfaces drift

MCP exports, OpenAPI specs, and function tools change faster than most release reviews can track.

Policies are implicit

Approval, confirmation, idempotency, and scope expectations often live in prompts, docs, or tribal knowledge.

Runtime evidence arrives late

Traces are useful, but they appear after behavior exists. Shipgate runs before promotion.

Product

A static pre-flight check for agent tool surfaces.

Shipgate turns an agent's tool surface into a reviewable release artifact: inventory, schemas, scopes, declared policies, findings, and recommended next actions.

Manifest-first

Use shipgate.yaml to declare agent purpose, tool sources, policies, overrides, and CI behavior.

MCP / OpenAPI analysis

Inspect local MCP exports and OpenAPI specs for broad schemas, write actions, missing bounds, and risky operations.

SDK-assisted

Optionally enrich reports with OpenAI Agents SDK static metadata without importing user code by default.

Tool-use readiness checks

Flag wildcard tools, missing approval policies, broad scopes, free-form action fields, and idempotency gaps.

CLI + GitHub Action

Run locally or add advisory checks to pull requests and release workflows.

Markdown + JSON reports

Produce human-readable release review reports and machine-readable JSON artifacts.

How it works

From tool surface to release-review report.

Declare

Define the agent, declared purpose, prohibited actions, tool sources, and policy expectations in shipgate.yaml.

Scan

Load local MCP exports, OpenAPI specs, and optional SDK static metadata.

Normalize

Build a unified tool inventory with schemas, scopes, annotations, source references, and risk hints.

Check

Run deterministic static checks for wildcard tools, broad schemas, approval gaps, idempotency evidence, scope mismatch, and more.

Report

Generate Markdown and JSON reports for local review, CI artifacts, or PR comments.

shipgate.yaml

MCP tools export

OpenAPI spec

Agents SDK metadata

agents-shipgate

static · local · deterministic

Markdown report

JSON report

GitHub Action summary

Sample report

Reports release owners can actually review.

Findings include severity, evidence, source reference, confidence, and a recommended next action — built for engineering and platform review, not for dashboards.

agents-shipgate-reports / report.md

Agents Shipgate Report

Release blockers

Critical

High

Medium

Human review

recommended

Top findings

#01 Critical openapi/billing.yaml:142

stripe.create_refund lacks a declared approval policy

evidence: financial_action · external_write · POST /refunds

recommend: Add approval policy or remove from this release.

confidence: high · check_id: tool-use/approval-missing

#02 Critical openapi/billing.yaml:142

stripe.create_refund lacks idempotency evidence

evidence: write action · amount/currency/payment_id schema · retry behavior unknown

recommend: Add idempotency key or document retry policy.

confidence: high · check_id: tool-use/approval-missing

#03 High shipgate.yaml:18

wildcard_mcp_tools.* exposes an unreviewable tool surface

evidence: wildcard tool source in shipgate.yaml

recommend: Replace wildcard with explicit allowlist.

confidence: high · check_id: tool-use/wildcard-source

#04 High mcp_tools.json:#/tools/send_email

support.send_email accepts free-form 'body' field

evidence: external_communication · no template binding

recommend: Constrain to template IDs or require human confirmation.

confidence: medium · check_id: tool-use/wildcard-source

#05 Medium openapi/tickets.yaml:88

tickets.update is missing maximum bound on 'fields'

evidence: unbounded object · broad write

recommend: Document or enforce a field allowlist.

confidence: medium · check_id: tool-use/unbounded-write

16 findings · 24 tools · 3 sources generated 2026-04-24T10:22Z

terminal

$ agents-shipgate scan --config shipgate.yaml
loading shipgate.yaml ........................ ok
reading mcp_tools.json (24 tools) ............. ok
reading openapi/billing.yaml .................. ok
reading openapi/tickets.yaml .................. ok
normalizing inventory ......................... 24 tools, 7 surfaces
running 18 static checks ...................... done
Status: Release blockers detected
Critical: 2  High: 13  Medium: 1
Human review: recommended
Top findings
crit stripe.create_refund · approval policy missing
crit stripe.create_refund · idempotency evidence missing
high wildcard_mcp_tools.* · unreviewable tool surface
high support.send_email · free-form body field
... 12 more findings
→ wrote agents-shipgate-reports/report.md
→ wrote agents-shipgate-reports/report.json
→ exit 0  (advisory mode)

report.json

// agents-shipgate-reports/report.json
{
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "status": "blockers",
  "summary": {
    "critical": 2,
    "high": 13,
    "medium": 1,
    "human_review": "recommended"
  },
  "findings": [
    {
      "id": "approval-missing-001",
      "severity": "critical",
      "tool": "stripe.create_refund",
      "check": "tool-use/approval-missing",
      "evidence": ["financial_action", "external_write"],
      "source": "openapi/billing.yaml:142",
      "confidence": "high",
      "recommendation": "Add approval policy or remove from release."
    },
    // 15 more findings ...
  ]
}

                GitHub Actions · Job Summary
              

  ▸ shipgate  advisory  ·  2.3s
Agents Shipgate · pull/482
head: feature/refunds-mcp-tool · base: main

  ●2 critical findings introduced
  ●13 high findings (4 new)
  ●1 medium finding
changed tool surface:
+ stripe.create_refund
+ support.send_email
~ tickets.update (schema widened)
→ report.md, report.json uploaded as artifacts
→ ci_mode: advisory (will not fail check)

What it catches

Hover findings to highlight, or browse the full check catalog.

Wildcard tools Approval gaps Broad scopes Free-form action fields Missing bounds Idempotency gaps External communication Injection-like descriptions

Total findings16

Tools inspected24

Sources3

Suppressed0

Why it matters

Tool-use risk is where agent releases become real.

An agent with no tools can still be wrong. An agent with tools can take action. Tool-use readiness focuses on the release risks that appear when tools, permissions, schemas, policies, and side effects enter the system.

Permission boundaries

Know when tools require broad scopes, service accounts, or missing approval policies.

Schema ambiguity

Catch broad free-form fields like updates, command, action, and body before they become model-controlled actions.

Blast radius

Flag missing maximum bounds, confirmation flows, and idempotency evidence for write actions.

Reviewability

Turn a tool surface into a report that release owners, platform teams, and security reviewers can discuss.

Release confidence

Run the same check locally, in PRs, or before promotion to production-like environments.

Developer workflow

Run it locally. Add it to PRs. Keep it advisory by default.

CI is advisory by default. Strict mode can fail only on unsuppressed critical findings when your team is ready.

Local CLI

bash

$ python -m pip install "git+https://github.com/ThreeMoonsLab/agents-shipgate@v0.1.0"
$ agents-shipgate init --workspace . --write
$ agents-shipgate scan --config shipgate.yaml

.github/workflows/shipgate.yml

yaml

name: Agents Shipgate
on:
  pull_request:
permissions:
  contents: read
jobs:
  shipgate:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@<pinned-sha>
      - uses: ThreeMoonsLab/agents-shipgate@v0.1.0
        with:
          config: shipgate.yaml
          ci_mode: advisory
          output_dir: agents-shipgate-reports

First run · 30 seconds

Run the fixture

Clone the repo and run Shipgate against the bundled example agent. You'll see real findings on a real tool surface — no setup, no credentials.

bash

$ git clone https://github.com/ThreeMoonsLab/agents-shipgate
$ cd agents-shipgate
$ agents-shipgate scan --config examples/refunds-agent/shipgate.yaml
→ 16 findings on the example agent

Design partners

Run Shipgate on your tool surface

If your team ships an agent with MCP or OpenAPI tools, we'd like to run Shipgate against your repo and walk you through the findings. False positives, missing checks, and rough edges become roadmap.

·Agents with tool calls in production or staging
·MCP servers, OpenAPI specs, or Agents SDK projects
·30-minute walkthrough of report and findings

Run Shipgate on your tool surface

Trust model · open source

Built for repositories that need to be careful.

Agents Shipgate is static by default and open-source. It does not execute agent code, run tools, call LLMs, connect to MCP servers, make network calls, or collect telemetry.

Designed to be safe to run on internal repositories before you connect any hosted service. Open-source core. Transparent checks. Suppressions require reasons.

View source Read trust model Open an issue

Inspect the checks. Run the fixture. Open an issue with a false positive.

Default scanner guarantees

Static by default

No agent execution
No tool calls
No LLM calls
No MCP server connections
No network calls
No telemetry
No user-code import by default
Apache-2.0 open source

Differentiation

Not an eval tool. Not observability. Not a gateway.

Evals test behavior. Observability records runtime. Gateways enforce access. Shipgate reviews the tool surface before release.

Not

Evals

They test behavior.

Shipgate reviews release artifacts.

Not

Observability

It records runtime.

Shipgate runs before promotion.

Not

A gateway

Gateways enforce access.

Shipgate produces review evidence.

Shipgate

Release gate

A release gate for agent tool surfaces.

Static checks. Findings with evidence.

Side-by-side

Category	What it answers	What Shipgate answers
Evals	Did the model behave as expected?	What tool surface are we releasing?
Observability	What happened at runtime?	What should be reviewed before promotion?
MCP gateway	Can a tool call be allowed at runtime?	Does this tool surface need release review?
Security scanner	Are there known code or dependency risks?	Are agent tools, schemas, scopes, and policies reviewable?
Governance platform	How do we manage org-level policy?	What static release findings exist in this repo today?

Long-term vision

From release readiness to agent healthcare.

Agents Shipgate starts with static release checks for tool-using agents. The longer-term vision is infrastructure for agent lifecycle health: release history, policy drift, trace-based evidence, approval workflows, re-review triggers, and governance signals across teams and agents.

01 · you are here

Tool-surface release checks

CLI + GitHub Action.

Release evidence

Reports, history, baselines, exceptions.

Runtime behavior evidence

Traces, tool routing, handoffs, guardrails.

Agent health infrastructure

Lifecycle health, policy drift, re-authorization, governance.

We are not building a closed governance suite. The lab works in the open and partners with teams shipping real agents.

Interested in design partnership

Find risky toolsbefore your agent ships.

Agents are moving from chat to action.

Tool surfaces drift

Policies are implicit

Runtime evidence arrives late

A static pre-flight check for agent tool surfaces.

Manifest-first

MCP / OpenAPI analysis

SDK-assisted

Tool-use readiness checks

CLI + GitHub Action

Markdown + JSON reports

From tool surface to release-review report.

Declare

Scan

Normalize

Check

Report

Reports release owners can actually review.

What it catches

Tool-use risk is where agent releases become real.

Permission boundaries

Schema ambiguity

Blast radius

Reviewability

Release confidence

Run it locally. Add it to PRs. Keep it advisory by default.

Run the fixture

Run Shipgate on your tool surface

Built for repositories that need to be careful.

Not an eval tool. Not observability. Not a gateway.

From release readiness to agent healthcare.

Tool-surface release checks

Release evidence

Runtime behavior evidence

Agent health infrastructure

Try the pre-flight check on your agent tool surface.

Find risky tools
before your agent ships.