What is AGENTOWNERS?
AGENTOWNERS is a governance layer for AI agents — a deterministic policy engine that evaluates agent actions against project rules. It's CODEOWNERS for AI: it decides which automated actions can proceed, need approval, or should be blocked.
Why for ChatGPT-CodeReview
AI code review bots have write-level access: they post comments, suggest changes, request changes, and approve PRs. AGENTOWNERS lets maintainers:
- Scope the bot's review authority — e.g., allow comments on
*.ts but block approval on infra/*
- Require human confirmation before AI-suggested changes land in sensitive paths
- Audit every AI review decision with file-level granularity
- Detect agent impersonation — flag when CI/bots sign commits as humans
Example policy
rules:
- pattern: "infra/**"
agent: "ChatGPT-CodeReview"
decision: require_approval
reason: "AI review suggestions on infra need human sign-off"
- pattern: "src/**"
agent: "ChatGPT-CodeReview"
decision: allow
reason: "Code comments from AI are welcome here"
As AI code review becomes standard, governance ensures bots review code without overstepping authority.
Full spec: https://github.com/cschanhniem/AGENTOWNERS
What is AGENTOWNERS?
AGENTOWNERS is a governance layer for AI agents — a deterministic policy engine that evaluates agent actions against project rules. It's CODEOWNERS for AI: it decides which automated actions can proceed, need approval, or should be blocked.
Why for ChatGPT-CodeReview
AI code review bots have write-level access: they post comments, suggest changes, request changes, and approve PRs. AGENTOWNERS lets maintainers:
*.tsbut block approval oninfra/*Example policy
As AI code review becomes standard, governance ensures bots review code without overstepping authority.
Full spec: https://github.com/cschanhniem/AGENTOWNERS