Classify delegated work by the governance unit it actually creates. Use call-level controls for tools, artifact governance for skills, and principal-level controls for sub-agents. If a delegate reasons independently or carries its own budget and trace, it is no longer a simple function call and should be governed as a separate actor.
How to classify delegated work in an AI gateway
Delegated work should be classified by the unit of governance it actually creates, not by the label used in the product. A gateway should treat a tool call as a call-level action, a packaged capability as artifact-level governance, and a sub-agent with independent reasoning or budget as a principal-level actor. That distinction determines what can be authenticated, scoped, audited, and revoked.
What changes when a delegate becomes more than a function call?
The key question is whether the gateway is brokering a single request, a reusable capability, or a separate decision-making entity. A tool call normally inherits the caller’s context and should be controlled like an invocation. A skill or artifact is something the platform can govern as a discrete package. A sub-agent with its own trace, policy envelope, or spend authority is closer to a principal, because it can persist, accumulate state, and create outcomes beyond one request.
That is why teams should avoid treating all delegated work as one category. If the delegate can independently choose actions, retain context across turns, or operate under a different authority boundary, the control model needs to move with it. The gateway should not rely on one generic approval path for assets that have different blast radii and different revocation needs.
How to draw the boundary in practice
Start by asking what the gateway must trust to let the delegate act. If the answer is “the caller’s single request,” treat it as a call-level control. If the answer is “the packaged behavior and inputs that define the task,” govern it as an artifact. If the answer is “this entity may continue acting, make choices, or consume budget on its own,” govern it as a principal. The boundary should follow authority and persistence, not implementation convenience.
Teams also need a simple test for escalation: if the delegate can outlive the request, make decisions without re-asking, or be blamed as a distinct operational unit, it needs stronger lifecycle and privilege controls. That usually means separate identity, tighter scoping, explicit approval, and clearer logging than a plain function call would require.
For discovery and inventory, Shadow AI and AI Agent Discovery Guide is useful when teams need to find unsanctioned delegates and decide which ones are being operated as tools versus actors. For gateway access and credential abuse, LLM Provider API Key Security and LLMjacking Guide shows why delegated access must be bounded before it is abused at scale.
How to avoid misclassifying sub-agents, skills, and tools
The most common mistake is collapsing everything into “agent activity” and then applying one policy to all of it. That hides the difference between an instruction wrapper, a reusable artifact, and a separate actor. Another error is assuming that a longer workflow automatically implies a principal. Length alone is not the signal, autonomy and authority are.
Useful classification usually depends on three observable traits: whether the delegate can reason independently, whether it has its own budget or quota, and whether it leaves a trace that operators would manage separately from the parent workflow. When those traits appear, the governance model should change even if the technical stack still routes through one gateway.
Risk and Threat Considerations
Misclassifying delegated work can create control gaps that look small on paper and become large in production. If a sub-agent is treated like a simple function call, teams may under-scope logging, over-share credentials, or miss the point at which one delegated action becomes a persistent actor with its own abuse path.
Failure mechanism: The gateway applies caller-level controls to something that has independent authority, so revocation, audit, and blast-radius limits do not match how the delegate actually operates.
Impact: Attackers or careless operators can stretch a narrow delegation into broader access, hidden spending, or persistent misuse that is harder to detect and harder to unwind.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Agentic AI Top 10 and OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 address the attack and risk surface, while NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 and NIST Zero Trust (SP 800-207) set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Agentic AI Top 10 | ASI03 — Identity & Privilege Abuse | Delegated work classification turns on whether a delegate has independent authority. |
| ASI02 — Tool Misuse | Call-level delegation is still exposed to unsafe tool invocation and overbroad actions. | |
| ASI10 — Rogue Agents | A delegate with its own budget and trace can become a distinct actor that must be governed. | |
| Recommendation — Apply ASI03 to separate tool-level actions from principal-level agent authority. Constrain tool execution to the smallest approved action set and scope. Treat autonomous delegates as separate actors and monitor them for unsanctioned behavior. | ||
| NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 | AC-6 — Least Privilege | Delegated work should receive only the authority needed for its actual governance unit. |
| AU-2 — Event Logging | Separate actors and higher-risk delegates require distinct traceability and audit evidence. | |
| IA-5 — Authenticator Management | Principal-level delegates need lifecycle control over credentials and revocation paths. | |
| Recommendation — Limit each delegated unit to the minimum permissions needed for its role. Log delegated actions at the boundary that matches the actor or control unit. Manage delegate credentials with explicit issuance, rotation, and revocation rules. | ||
| NIST Zero Trust (SP 800-207) | Zero Trust Architecture | The answer depends on verifying each delegate at its actual authority boundary. |
| Recommendation — Enforce continuous verification at the boundary where authority is actually exercised. | ||
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-05 — Overprivileged NHI | Delegated work becomes risky when a delegate is granted more authority than its unit needs. |
| Recommendation — Reduce delegated privileges to the smallest scope that still completes the task. | ||
Practitioner Guidance
What to prioritise: Classify first by authority boundary, then by implementation form. If the delegate can act after the initial request ends, it needs a different control model than a single tool invocation.
What to verify: Confirm whether each delegated unit has its own identity, its own budget or quota, and its own revocation path. If any of those exist, do not govern it as a plain call.
Decision rule: If the delegate can make discretionary choices or accumulate state, treat it as a principal; if it only executes one bounded action, keep it at call level; if it is a reusable packaged capability, govern the artifact separately.
Practitioner takeaway: The safest gateway design is the one that makes delegation boundaries visible in policy, logging, and revocation before the system starts to depend on them.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
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Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on October 12, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group — the #1 independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org