Tool traces are not an AI agent audit trail

An LLM observability log can show the prompt, the tool name, and the latency. Useful for debugging. Not enough for an auditor.

When someone asks "what did this agent do, and why was it allowed?", you need an authorization envelope at the enforcement boundary:

• Agent identity plus the human principal or delegation chain
• Tool + resource + action
• Policy ID/version and allow/deny with a reason
• HITL approval when the policy required one
• Correlation IDs that join the decision to the side effect

Logging only after the tool runs misses the control point. Prefer the PDP or MCP gateway that decides before execution.

I work at Permit.io — we wrote up the minimum evidence package for an AI agent audit trail:

https://www.permit.io/blog/ai-agent-audit-trail?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ai-agent-audit-trail&utm_content=authbyexample-article