Deployment Variants

Universal governance across Kubernetes, Serverless, and Managed Agent Platforms.

The Mandrel Project is designed as a Universal Governance Overlay. While Kubernetes with the Gantry Operator is the reference “Gold Standard” for assurance, Mandrel’s enforcement logic is portable across any compute environment or agentic framework.

Architectural Patterns

Mandrel adapts its “Clamping” mechanism to match the native capabilities of the target platform.

1. The Sidecar (Kubernetes & Serverless)

The reference pattern where the Collet sidecar and the Agent share a network namespace.

Standard K8s: Automated injection via the Gantry Operator with transparent iptables redirection.
GCP Cloud Run / AWS Fargate: Multi-container service definitions where the Collet acts as the primary ingress proxy.

2. The Custom Extension (Managed Platforms)

For opaque, fully managed agent ecosystems where sidecars are not permitted.

Vertex AI Agent Engine: Mandrel is registered as a Custom Tool. The engine invokes the Mandrel endpoint to certify user intent and budget before allowing the agent to proceed.
Amazon Bedrock Agents: Integrated via a Lambda Layer that wraps the agent’s action groups, performing in-process interception of the Bedrock session context.

3. The Logic Hook (Framework-First)

For developers building code-first agents using high-level orchestration libraries.

LangGraph: Mandrel acts as a State Reducer node that validates transitions. It utilizes native LangGraph Interrupts to handle governance “Challenges” (HITL).
AutoGen / CrewAI: Integrated as a Proxy Agent or “Speaker Middleware” that enforces the spec’s permitted-delegates list before allowing agent-to-agent delegation.

4. Private Plumbing (Edge & Legacy)

For environments where automated mesh management is unavailable.

Docker Compose: Uses private virtual networks to ensure the Agent is unreachable except through the Collet’s governed port.
Bare Metal: Uses Static Port Offsetting and local firewalls to bind the Agent to localhost and the Collet to the public interface.

Capability Matrix

Feature	K8s / Gantry	Cloud Run / Fargate	Bedrock / Vertex	LangGraph / AutoGen
Identity	SPIFFE / SVID	Workload Identity	Platform Session	Application Auth
Trust domain	Platform policy, resolved at promotion	Platform policy	Platform policy	Platform policy
Promotion authority	Managed Lab, self-hosted lab, or CI	Any	Any	Any
Enforcement	L3/L4 + L7	Layer 7 Proxy	Pre-flight Tool	Logic-flow Hook
HITL Pattern	Step-Up Token	Step-Up Token	Platform Interrupt	Native `interrupt()`
Egress Control	Transparent Envoy	Forward Proxy	VPC Perimeter	Code-level

Environment-Specific Guides

Mandrel CLI Reference: See the generate command for platform-specific manifest targets.
Metrology Lab: Learn how the Lab bakes environment-specific platform policies into your Realized Spec.
Kong Gateway & Mesh Integration: Compile specs into declarative Kong Gateway plugins and Mesh traffic permissions.

Bring your own promotion authority

Every variant above assumes something produces signed Realized Specs. That something does not have to be the managed Metrology Lab, and it does not have to be a service at all: verification is offline by construction, so a pipeline that bakes, signs and writes a file satisfies the mandatory profile. The metrology contract defines what conformance requires, and is honest about the one thing a CI-only authority cannot provide — agent-name uniqueness.