Core concepts
How Dome governs agents, resources, and requests
Core concepts explain what each Dome piece is, how the pieces fit together, and when to choose one design over another.
Dome separates components you define (agents, resources, Gateways), controls you apply to traffic (Rules, Guards, Quotas), and audit that records what happened. Agents reach tools and models through a Gateway while Dome holds the upstream credentials. On each call, the controls decide what is allowed, what content may pass, and how much spend is left.
If you have not picked a role yet, start with Personas or What is Dome?.
Read in dependency order
From the system map down to the evidence trail:
- Architecture covers components, controls, audit, and the request path.
- Scopes explains organization → tenant → workspace isolation.
- Identity Patterns compares standing vs delegated identity.
- Agents, Resources, and Gateways are the components you define.
- Rules, Guards, and Quotas are the controls that govern traffic.
- Audit events is the evidence trail across both planes.
Architecture
The system map and request path.
Architecture
How agents, resources, Gateways, controls, and audit relate.
Authorization model
Cedar permit and forbid, effective policy, and fail-closed evaluation.
Data plane
The hot-path runtime that enforces configuration synced from Dome.
Identity
Choose how an agent presents itself before you wire credentials.
Identity patterns
Standing identity versus delegated identity (act-as) at design time.
Agent identity
API keys, session tokens, and verified end-user claims on the wire.
Components
Things you define so a workload can reach tools and models.
Agents
The principals for authentication, authorization, and audit.
Agent lifecycle
The states an agent moves through, and what each state permits.
Resources
Tools, models, and pools. Dome stores the upstream credentials; agents never hold them.
Gateways
Membership and agent grants behind one URL.
Tools gateway
The MCP ingress on that URL, not a separate Gateway type.
LLM gateway
The model ingress on that URL, not a separate Gateway type.
Controls
Things you apply after a call is admitted.
Rules
Scoped Cedar bundles that authorize what an agent may do.
Guards
Content inspection on request and response paths.
Quotas
Spend caps over a window, including pool spillover.
Platform and audit
Tenancy boundaries, who may administer Dome, and the evidence left behind.
Scopes
The organization, tenant, and workspace hierarchy.
Permissions
Platform RBAC for people and API clients, separate from Cedar for agents.
Audit events
One trail across configuration changes and runtime decisions.
Webhooks
Signed copies of selected events delivered to your endpoints.