# Audit Logging — AI Coding-Agent Guardrails

Source: https://www.geekswithgeeks.com/en/coding-agent-guardrails/detect-audit-log

> Record every action, decision and reason in a form you can search later.

## What happened, and why was it allowed?

Log every tool call as one **structured line**: time, session, tool, a redacted command or path, the **decision** (allow, ask, deny) and the **reason**. After an incident this answers "what exactly ran?" in minutes. Store logs where the agent cannot edit them, keep them for a sensible period and never write secrets into them.

## See it, test it, recover

You need a record of what the agent did, tests that attack your guardrails, and a plan for when something slips.

![Four steps: log, red-team, alert, recover.](assets/figures/coding-agent-guardrails/section-7-map.svg) — Figure 7.1 — Log, red-team, alert and recover.

## One log line, run

I ran this. The token in the command was redacted before logging. Note the redaction pattern also removed the rest of that token, so the line looks truncated; that is the safe direction to be wrong in.

```python
import json, re
def redact(t): return re.sub(r"(?i)(password|secret|token)\s*[=:]\s*\S+", "[REDACTED]", t)

line = json.dumps({
    "tool": "bash",
    "cmd": redact("curl -H 'token=abc123' x"),
    "decision": "deny",
    "reason": "network",
}, sort_keys=True)
print(line)
```

Output:

```
{"cmd": "curl -H '[REDACTED] x", "decision": "deny", "reason": "network", "tool": "bash"}
```

## Alert on patterns, not only on events

A single denied command is normal. Twenty denials in a minute, a denied attempt to read `.env`, or an attempt to reach an unknown host deserve an alert and a human look.

**Quiz:** What should each audit log line include besides the action?

- [ ] The agent's password
- [x] The decision and the reason
- [ ] A joke
- [ ] Nothing else

*Answer:* The decision and the reason. Knowing why an action was allowed or denied is essential for improving the policy.