DEV Community

Goetz Kohlberg
Goetz Kohlberg

Posted on

Why I Built an AI Governance Platform Instead of Another Agent Framework

#agents #ai #management #security

Every week, a new AI agent framework launches. CrewAI, AutoGen, LangChain agents, the 31 tools in the OpenClaw ecosystem, they all solve orchestration. None of them solve governance.

I spent 35 years in IT and project management. The pattern is familiar: technology ships fast, oversight comes later, and the gap creates problems that cost more to fix than prevent.

The governance gap in AI agents:

  • No audit trail for what agents decide or why
  • No budget enforcement, agents can burn through API credits unchecked
  • No approval chains before high-impact actions
  • No compliance framework for regulated industries

The EU AI Act becomes enforceable in August 2026. South Korea's AI Basic Act is already in effect. Vietnam's AI Law went live March 1. Organizations deploying autonomous agents will need to demonstrate governance. Not as a best practice, as law.

What SIDJUA does differently:

SIDJUA is governance-by-architecture. Instead of adding compliance as a plugin, every agent action passes through a 5-step pre-action pipeline before execution: budget check, policy check, tier authorization, rate limiting, and compliance verification.

Agents are organized into a hierarchy with tiers, divisions, and defined authority levels, like a well-run organization, not a free-for-all.

GitHub: https://github.com/GoetzKohlberg/sidjua
Website: https://sidjua.com

Technical highlights:

  • 2,708+ tests, TypeScript strict mode, zero failures
  • Multi-provider: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, local LLMs (Ollama), any OpenAI-compatible endpoint
  • Zero-config first run with embedded free LLM (Cloudflare Workers AI)
  • Configuration-driven: entire org structure from YAML
  • SQLite per agent with AES-256-GCM encryption
  • Docker multi-arch (amd64 + arm64)
  • AGPL-3.0 open source

The honest status: This is V0.9.2. CLI-only, no GUI yet (V1.0 in April). It works, it's tested, but it's not production-ready enterprise software. I'm shipping early because getting developer feedback matters more than waiting for perfection.

GitHub: https://github.com/GoetzKohlberg/sidjua
Website: https://sidjua.com
Discord: https://discord.gg/C79wEYgaKc

I'm building this solo with AI agents (Claude Opus, Sonnet, Haiku) as my development team, not just coding assistants, actual colleagues with defined roles. Happy to discuss the architecture, the governance approach, or the experience of building a company with AI teammates.

Top comments (0)