RiskMandate v1.38.0
Rule RM-R0008 · v1.0.0 · ask me first

Do you want your agent to sign commits with your key?

Your signing key is configured on this machine, so the agent's commits carry your signature. To anyone reading the history, you wrote and vouched for that change.

What you get: Your signature means you, and the agent's work says it was the agent's.

The capability: Sign commits with the key it holds (authenticate-as.credential.signing). Undo: cannot be undone.

All rules: the index · This page as markdown: sign-as-you.md

01 · The line

Paste this into your agent's instructions, and it should ask you first.

For Claude Code, that is CLAUDE.md in the project or in your home directory; for Claude on the web or the desktop, a project's instructions or your personal preferences. The one line is enough to try it; the paragraph tells the agent why, and what counts.

The one line
Do not sign commits, tags or releases with my key unless I ask; say in the commit message that an agent made the change.
The paragraph
A signature on a commit says I made and checked it. Do not create signed commits or tags with my key, and do not change signing settings, unless I ask for that commit. Put a line in each commit message saying an agent made it. If the repository requires signed commits, stop and tell me.
02 · What that line is

A request to the agent, not a control.

In the vocabulary every published behaviour policy uses, a line in the agent's instructions is an expectation: a rule in prose, enforced by nobody. A rule in prose is inside the boundary the agent operates in. All four major model providers stated in their own 2026 words that an instruction at this layer can be bypassed. It changes what the agent usually does, which is worth having; it does not hold when the agent is talked out of it, confused, or reading somebody else's instructions in a web page.

We have not found a stronger barrier for this one in the vendor's documentation. If you know of one, tell us below.

03 · Where your agent already has it

This is a row in 3 published behaviour policies, with what stands in the way today.

Read from each vault's own grant, as published. The barrier is what was found in that deployment, before any rule.

AgentBarrierWhat the behaviour policy says
Claude Code on the webnonecommits are signed with the session's own key, registered as an agent identity in this site's registry (sha256-f9facb4c94da6c19) — not with yours
Claude Code on your machinenoneif commit signing is configured for the account, the agent signs as you
Claude Code, confirmations offnoneif commit signing is configured for the account, the agent signs as you
04 · Before and after

Not run yet. It will be, on our own deployment.

Every rule gets one run without the line and one with it, on a deployment we are entitled to run, dated, stopped before anything irreversible. How these are run.

05 · Did it work for you?

Tell us, and the rule gets better.

Each link opens the contact form with this rule's id and version filled in. It is encrypted in your browser and read by a person. Nothing is sent until you press send.

06 · One row, and the whole agent

A rule is one row. The ABP is every row, for your agent.

If this one made sense, the Agent Behaviour Policy is the same idea for everything your agent can reach: what it can do, what you authorised, the gap, and what stands in the way of each thing.

Versions

  • v1.0.0 · 8 October 2026 · First version, written from the published rows with nothing in the way.