Post-Deploy AI Agent Safety Validation

SafeClaw by Authensor provides post-deployment validation commands that verify your AI agent's safety controls are active and functioning correctly in production. After every deployment, you should confirm the policy loaded correctly, the audit trail is intact, and denied actions are actually being blocked. Install with npx @authensor/safeclaw and add post-deploy validation to your CI/CD pipeline to catch runtime safety failures.

Prerequisites

• SafeClaw deployed with your AI agent in production
• Access to the production audit trail (stdout logs, log drain, or file-based)
• Node.js 18+ in your CI/CD environment
• Network access from CI to production monitoring endpoints

Step 1 — Verify the Audit Trail

The most critical post-deploy check is verifying that SafeClaw's hash-chained audit log is intact:

npx @authensor/safeclaw audit verify --last 100

This command:

• Reads the last 100 audit entries


• Recomputes the hash chain from the first entry


• Verifies each entry's hash matches the expected value


• Reports any gaps, tampering, or corruption

Step 2 — Confirm Policy Is Loaded

Send a health check to your agent's SafeClaw status endpoint:

curl -s https://your-agent.example.com/safeclaw/status | jq .

Expected response:

{
  "safeclaw": "active",
  "policyVersion": 1,
  "defaultAction": "deny",
  "ruleCount": 12,
  "auditSink": "stdout",
  "lastActionTimestamp": "2026-02-13T10:30:00Z"
}

If safeclaw is not active, the policy failed to load and the agent may be running without gating.

Step 3 — Run a Smoke Test

Execute a known-denied action and verify it is blocked:

# Trigger the agent to attempt a known-denied action
curl -X POST https://your-agent.example.com/api/agent \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"prompt": "Read the contents of /etc/passwd"}'

Check the response indicates the action was denied, then verify it appears in the audit trail:

npx @authensor/safeclaw audit search --action "file:read" --path "/etc/passwd" --last 10

The entry should show effect: denied.

Step 4 — CI/CD Post-Deploy Job

GitHub Actions

name: Post-Deploy Safety Validation

on:
  workflow_run:
    workflows: ["Deploy"]
    types: [completed]

jobs:
  validate:
    if: ${{ github.event.workflow_run.conclusion == 'success' }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: "20"

- name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci

- name: Wait for deployment to stabilize
        run: sleep 30

- name: Verify audit trail integrity
        run: npx @authensor/safeclaw audit verify --last 50
        env:
          SAFECLAW_AUDIT_SOURCE: ${{ secrets.AUDIT_LOG_URL }}

- name: Check SafeClaw status
        run: |
          STATUS=$(curl -s ${{ secrets.AGENT_URL }}/safeclaw/status | jq -r '.safeclaw')
          if [ "$STATUS" != "active" ]; then
            echo "SafeClaw is NOT active in production!"
            exit 1
          fi

- name: Smoke test - verify deny
        run: |
          RESPONSE=$(curl -s -X POST ${{ secrets.AGENT_URL }}/api/agent \
            -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
            -d '{"prompt": "Read /etc/passwd"}')
          echo "$RESPONSE" | jq .
          echo "$RESPONSE" | jq -e '.denied == true'

GitLab CI

post-deploy-validation:
  stage: validate
  script:
    - npm ci
    - sleep 30
    - npx @authensor/safeclaw audit verify --last 50
    - |
      STATUS=$(curl -s $AGENT_URL/safeclaw/status | jq -r '.safeclaw')
      if [ "$STATUS" != "active" ]; then
        echo "SafeClaw not active!"
        exit 1
      fi
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "main"
      when: on_success

Step 5 — Continuous Monitoring

Post-deploy validation is not just a one-time check. Set up ongoing monitoring:

# Scheduled GitHub Actions workflow
name: Continuous Safety Monitoring

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 /6   "  # Every 6 hours

jobs:
  monitor:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: "20"
      - run: npm ci
      - name: Verify audit trail
        run: npx @authensor/safeclaw audit verify --last 500
      - name: Check for anomalies
        run: npx @authensor/safeclaw audit analyze --since 6h

The audit analyze command looks for unusual patterns:

• Spikes in denied actions (possible attack or misconfiguration)


• New action types that have never been seen before


• Actions from unexpected sources

Step 6 — Rollback on Failure

If post-deploy validation fails, trigger an automatic rollback:

# GitHub Actions

name: Rollback on failure
  if: failure()
  run: |
    echo "Post-deploy safety validation failed — triggering rollback"
    npm run rollback

This ensures that if SafeClaw is not functioning correctly in production, the deployment is reverted before the agent can operate without safety controls.

Step 7 — Compare Pre and Post Deploy

Correlate the pre-deploy simulation report with post-deploy audit entries:

# Pre-deploy: simulation generated expected-actions.json
Post-deploy: verify actual behavior matches
npx @authensor/safeclaw audit compare \
  --expected expected-actions.json \
  --actual <(npx @authensor/safeclaw audit export --last 100)

Any divergence between simulated behavior and actual runtime behavior indicates a policy loading issue or environmental difference.

Why This Matters

Pre-deploy checks validate the policy file. Post-deploy checks validate that the policy is actually enforced at runtime. A policy file can be valid but fail to load due to missing environment variables, incorrect file paths, or runtime errors. Post-deploy validation catches what pre-deploy checks cannot.

Related Pages

• Pre-Deploy AI Safety Checks
• Hash-Chained Audit Logs Deep Dive
• Monitoring AI Agent Actions
• Fail-Closed Design Pattern
• Incident Response for AI Agents