An Agent must be identifiable, constrainable, upgradeable, and revocable.
An Agent needs a life cycle, the way an account and a model version do. Who may create it, who may authorize it, how it is watched while it runs, how it is stopped when something goes wrong, and how its data is handled once it retires. Without a state machine there is no trusted execution layer, and no way to tell an auditor what was running at a given time.
The core states
The life-cycle path
Register, then review and authorize, then run as Active, then monitor and sample continuously, then suspend on a triggering event, then upgrade through an approved change, then retire under a retention policy.
The aim of the life cycle is to answer, at any time: which Agent is running, on what model, with access to what, and who approved the last change.
Governance and risk, in brief
| Dimension | Key point |
|---|---|
| Ownership | Each Agent has an owning node or responsible person; on an incident, the owner is the first contact |
| Change | Production changes pass through a change window with a rollback; a major model switch can require a parallel rollout |
| Data | Training data, log retention, and any cross-border transfer follow the node's location and contract |
| Security | Keys and tool credentials are held in escrow; an Agent never holds a user's plaintext password |
| Audit | Logs are kept at least as long as a dispute may take to trace, and can be exported for third-party review |
Without the ability to suspend and retire, an Agent can hold expired permissions long after its work ends. That standing access is a common source of data breaches and compliance penalties.
The difference from an always-on loop
An autonomous loop has no defined endpoint by default. The WCN life cycle ties every run to a task and to the term of its authorization. When the task ends or the authorization expires, the Agent's calls are rejected or made read-only. It does not keep running in the background.
The line to give an auditor is short: WCN Agents are scoped, recorded jobs with a defined end, not tireless workers that run on their own.