Use Policy Advisor

Policy advisor lets a running sandboxed agent ask for a narrow network policy change after OpenShell denies a request. The agent submits a draft through policy.local, a developer approves or rejects it from outside the sandbox, and approved network policy hot-reloads into the same sandbox.

Policy advisor does not grant access automatically. The structured rule is the approval contract, and the agent’s rationale is supporting context.

Enable Policy Advisor

Policy advisor is disabled by default. Enable it globally when you want every sandbox on the selected gateway to expose the agent proposal surface:

$
openshell settings set --global \
>
  --key agent_policy_proposals_enabled \
>
  --value true \
>
  --yes

You can also enable it for one sandbox, unless the key is managed globally:

$
openshell settings set <sandbox-name> \
>
  --key agent_policy_proposals_enabled \
>
  --value true

Check the effective setting for a sandbox:

$
openshell settings get <sandbox-name>

The output shows whether agent_policy_proposals_enabled is global, sandbox, or unset. A global value overrides sandbox-scoped values. To return control to sandbox-scoped settings, delete the global key:

$
openshell settings delete --global \
>
  --key agent_policy_proposals_enabled \
>
  --yes

Set the value before creating a sandbox when you want the first denied request to include policy advisor guidance. Running sandboxes poll settings and can enable the surface after startup, but startup enablement gives the agent the clearest first-denial path.

How It Works

When policy advisor is enabled, the sandbox supervisor turns on three agent-facing surfaces:

• It installs /etc/openshell/skills/policy_advisor.md inside the sandbox.
• It serves http://policy.local from inside the sandbox.
• It adds next_steps to L7 policy_denied response bodies so the agent can find the skill and local API.

The loop has six steps:

1. A sandboxed process attempts a network request that policy denies.
2. For inspected REST traffic, OpenShell returns a structured 403 body with fields such as layer, host, port, binary, method, path, rule_missing, and next_steps.
3. The agent reads the policy advisor skill, inspects the current policy, and optionally reads recent denial log lines.
4. The agent submits one or more addRule proposals to http://policy.local/v1/proposals.
5. The gateway stores accepted proposals as pending draft chunks for the sandbox.
6. A developer reviews the draft, approves or rejects it, and the agent waits on /v1/proposals/{chunk_id}/wait until a decision is available.

When a proposal is approved, /wait reports policy_reloaded: true only after the local sandbox policy covers the approved rule. At that point the agent can retry the original denied action once. If a proposal is rejected, /wait returns rejection_reason and validation_result so the agent can revise or stop.

What Gets Proposed

OpenShell has two proposal paths:

For REST APIs, prefer L7 rules over broad L4 access. A good proposal allows one method and the smallest safe path:

1
{
2
  "intent_summary": "Allow gh to update documentation in NVIDIA/OpenShell.",
3
  "operations": [
4
    {
5
      "addRule": {
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        "ruleName": "github_contents_docs_write",
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        "rule": {
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          "name": "github_contents_docs_write",
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          "endpoints": [
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            {
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              "host": "api.github.com",
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              "port": 443,
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              "protocol": "rest",
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              "enforcement": "enforce",
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              "rules": [
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                {
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                  "allow": {
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                    "method": "PUT",
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                    "path": "/repos/NVIDIA/OpenShell/contents/docs/**"
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                  }
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                }
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              ]
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            }
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          ],
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          "binaries": [
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            {
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              "path": "/usr/bin/gh"
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            }
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          ]
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        }
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      }
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    }
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  ]
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}

The current policy.local JSON shape covers L4 endpoints and REST method or path rules. Use Customize Sandbox Policies or Policy Schema Reference for policy fields that are not part of the agent-authored proposal surface, such as WebSocket credential rewrite, GraphQL operation matching, endpoint path scoping, and provider-owned policy bundles.

Policy advisor proposals do not add allowed_ips automatically. If a hostname resolves to an internal or private address, OpenShell’s SSRF protections still block the connection until a developer explicitly adds the required allowed_ips entry.

Review Proposals

Review pending chunks from the host:

$
openshell rule get <sandbox-name> --status pending

The output shows the chunk ID, status, rationale, binary, and endpoint summary. For L7 proposals, the endpoint summary includes the protocol, method, and path:

Endpoints: api.github.com:443 [L7 rest, allow PUT /repos/NVIDIA/OpenShell/contents/docs/**]

Approve only when the structured rule matches the access you intend to grant:

$
openshell rule approve <sandbox-name> --chunk-id <chunk-id>

Reject with guidance when the rule is too broad or points at the wrong target:

$
openshell rule reject <sandbox-name> \
>
  --chunk-id <chunk-id> \
>
  --reason "Scope this to docs/ paths only."

The rejection reason is returned to the agent through policy.local. The agent can use it to draft a narrower proposal.

Agent API

policy.local is available only inside the sandbox and uses plain HTTP:

If policy advisor is disabled, every route returns 404 feature_disabled, the skill is not installed for new sandboxes, and L7 deny bodies do not advertise policy.local routes.

What to Expect

Approved network rules hot-reload without restarting the sandbox. HTTP L7 keep-alive connections are closed at the reload boundary so the next parsed request uses the new policy. Raw streams remain connection-scoped, as described in Customize Sandbox Policies.

Policy advisor emits audit events into the sandbox log. Use these lines to trace the full loop:

$
openshell logs <sandbox-name> --since 10m

Look for HTTP:* DENIED, CONFIG:PROPOSED, CONFIG:APPROVED or CONFIG:REJECTED, CONFIG:LOADED, and the final allowed request if the agent retries successfully.

Next Steps

• Use Customize Sandbox Policies for manual policy updates and L7 rule syntax.
• Use Policy Schema Reference for full YAML field details.
• Use Logging to interpret OCSF shorthand log entries.