Contextus FAQ
Questions about Contextus? Start here.
Practical answers about how Contextus works, where it fits, governance and approvals, privacy, integrations, and plans.
Understanding Contextus
What Contextus is, where it fits, and why teams add it around existing developer-agent workflows.
What does Contextus do?
Contextus is the control layer between developer agents and the tools they use. It prepares the context an agent needs, checks governed actions against policy, pauses risky work for approval, and records the decision and outcome.
Why would I use Contextus if my agent already has permissions or approval prompts?
Agent-level controls usually apply inside one tool or workflow. Contextus provides a shared policy and evidence layer across supported agents, tools, models, and environments, so the same boundaries and review requirements can follow the workflow.
Do I have to replace my existing agent or IDE?
No. Contextus is designed to sit around existing developer-agent workflows. Teams can keep the agents, editors, MCP servers, APIs, and automation they already use.
What problem does Contextus solve?
AI agents are moving from chat to action. They can write code, call tools, access systems, and make decisions. Contextus helps teams control what agents see, what they can do, who approves risky steps, and how outcomes are reviewed.
Is Contextus a coding agent?
No. Contextus works alongside coding agents and custom agent workflows. It controls the context and tool actions around the work rather than replacing the agent that performs it.
How is Contextus different from observability?
Observability helps teams see what happened. Contextus applies policy before governed actions execute, can pause them for review, and then retains the resulting evidence.
Who is Contextus for?
AI engineering teams shipping agent workflows, platform teams defining policies and approvals, and developer-tool teams embedding agents into IDEs, MCP, CI, or custom environments.
What is an AI agent?
A model call answers once. An agent keeps working toward a goal. It can remember context, call tools, check results, and try the next step.
Why do agents need controls?
Once agents can write, delete, deploy, call APIs, use credentials, or affect production systems, teams need clear boundaries around what can continue, what needs review, and what must be blocked.
Governance and approvals
How policies, approval paths, and agent identity turn consequential actions into reviewable decisions.
What is Action Control?
Action Control is the approval and audit layer for agent tool use. It checks requested actions against policy, pauses risky actions, and records decisions in the audit trail.
Where do policy checks help most?
Policy checks help when an agent is about to write files, delete data, send messages, call the network, access credentials, run code, or change configuration. Approvals give the team a clean checkpoint before the action becomes real.
What counts as a risky action?
Examples include writing files, deleting data, sending messages, making network calls, accessing credentials, running code, or changing configuration.
What runtime controls does Contextus check?
Contextus can check shell commands, file changes, network access, and tool usage before agents act. Teams can use command approval previews, filesystem boundary checks, network egress policy, runtime action envelopes, and local or MCP agent support without rebuilding their workflows.
Can Contextus block an action?
Yes. Contextus can allow, ask for approval, deny, or redact information depending on policy and risk level.
What is Agent Passport?
Agent Passport identifies which agent is acting, who it acts on behalf of, what it is allowed to do, and when human approval is required.
What is Tool Passport?
Tool Passport identifies the tool an agent is using and the trust signals attached to it before it participates in a governed workflow.
Proof and audit
How Contextus keeps approvals, audit records, routing evidence, and evaluations connected for later review.
What does “prove” mean?
Proof means keeping reviewable evidence: what context was used, which model path was chosen, which action was requested, which policy applied, who approved it, what runtime findings were recorded, and what the evaluation result showed.
Why do evals belong beside approvals?
An approval tells you who allowed an action. An eval tells you whether the workflow produced the kind of result you expected. Keeping them together gives engineering and security teams a reviewable record.
How do proof exports support review?
Proof exports are audit-ready records that support internal review, security workflows, procurement conversations, and incident follow-up.
Can proof include routing evidence?
Yes. When a governed action shares a session with a routing decision, Contextus can include the requested model, selected model, provider, policy hash, decision reason, estimated cost, actual cost when available, latency, agent ID, and session ID in the proof bundle.
Routing and models
How Contextus prepares context, applies model policy, and keeps routing decisions explainable.
Is Contextus a model router?
Model routing is one capability inside Contextus. The broader product governs agent context, model selection, tool actions, approval requirements, identity, and retained evidence through shared policy.
Is Contextus an AI gateway?
Contextus can operate in the execution path like a gateway, but it governs more than model requests. It can also evaluate tool actions, require approval, identify the acting agent, and record the resulting decision.
What is Contextus Gateway?
Contextus Gateway is the governed entry point for model calls. It keeps provider-native request formats intact, makes a policy-aware routing decision, forwards the request to the selected provider, and records routing evidence for later review.
How does Compile fit into Contextus?
Compile assembles the right working context before an agent acts. It can include retrieval, ranking, trimming, and compacting as part of the larger control layer for agent context, actions, approvals, evaluations, and proof.
What is SitEmb?
SitEmb is Contextus’s situation-aware context ranking engine. It helps select the files, docs, policies, and task history that matter for the current task while reducing noisy, stale, or unrelated context.
What is Standard Mode?
Standard Mode is provider-agnostic governance for MCP, editor-native agents, CLIs, SDKs, and managed model workflows: compile context, route under policy, govern runtime actions, approve risk, and keep proof.
What is Hybrid Mode?
Hybrid Mode applies recursive compile planning to managed APIs: summarize, critique missing context, retrieve targeted context, plan, then govern the action.
What is Recursive Lab?
Recursive Lab is invite-only research for self-hosted or open-weight recursive workers. Lab workflows decode into a human-readable action plan before Runtime Shield, Action Control, and Proof.
Integrations
How Contextus fits around the agents, tools, and automation a team already uses.
How does Contextus relate to MCP?
MCP gives agents a standard way to connect to tools. Contextus adds the control layer around that connection: compile the right context, classify the requested tool action, ask for approval when needed, and keep proof of what happened.
Which workflows can Contextus support?
Contextus is designed for developer-agent workflows across editors, MCP servers, CLIs, SDKs, CI workflows, APIs, and internal automation.
Do integrations require rebuilding my workflow?
No. Contextus is designed to add shared policy, approval, identity, context, and evidence around supported workflows without replacing the agent or tools doing the work.
Data and privacy
How Contextus handles your code, your data, and deployment requirements.
Does Contextus see my source code?
For hosted workflows, Contextus processes the context you send through the API or connected tools. For local workflows, teams can keep more processing local depending on setup. The product can be configured based on the team’s security needs.
How is customer data used?
Customer data is processed to provide the service: compile context, route requests, apply policy, record approvals, generate evaluation evidence, and maintain audit-ready proof.
Can I self-host Contextus?
Self-hosted and private deployment options are planned for larger teams. Contact us to discuss enterprise deployment.
Plans and billing
What the plans mean, when shared governance becomes useful, and where billing belongs.
Does Builder include governed routing?
Builder includes API access, policy controls, and the personal routing and proof surfaces needed to test a governed workflow before moving into shared team operations.
What is personal audit history?
Builder includes a personal view of approvals, policy outcomes, and recent workflow activity so individual developers can review what happened without a shared team workspace.
How do Team approvals work?
Team adds shared approval workflows for risky tool actions, plus audit export and role-based access so reviews and escalations belong to the team workflow.
Can I change plans anytime?
Yes. You can upgrade or downgrade as your rollout changes. In-app billing handles plan updates, and pricing changes are prorated when applicable.
When should I move from Builder to Team?
Move to Team when governance becomes shared: multiple people need approval workflows, audit export, role-based access, shared dashboards, or a common workspace.
Where do I manage billing after signup?
The Contextus dashboard handles plan changes, invoices, and billing portal actions after signup. The public pricing page helps teams choose the right starting plan.
Which plan should I start with?
Free is for exploring a first governed workflow. Builder fits individual use. Move to Team when policies, approvals, evidence, and workspace access need to be shared.
Plans and billing
Compare plans here. Manage billing in Contextus.
Review the public plan options, then use the signed-in dashboard for plan changes, invoices, and payment details.