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ConceptsObserve Mode

Observe Mode

Observe Mode is a free, no-signup way to watch what your agent actually does before you commit to anything. You bring your own platform key, your agent’s calls relay through AgentValet, and every call lands in a live audit feed on a private link. There is no account, no card, and nothing to configure beyond the key itself.

Not to be confused with advisory mode, the Doorman’s non-blocking recording mode inside the governed pipeline. Observe Mode is a separate, unauthenticated trial surface with its own route and its own credential model.

What it is

Observe Mode runs on a deliberately separate code path from the governed pipeline (/v1/observe/actions, not /v1/actions). It exists only for trial agents on an ephemeral, unclaimed organisation, and it does one job: relay a call to a vetted platform base URL using a credential you supply on each request, then record the shape of that call.

It is a recording of real calls, not a safety net. Observe Mode applies no policy. It does not check scopes, it does not hold anything for approval, and it does not block a call because the request looks wrong. If you want an agent stopped before it acts, that’s the governed path, not this one.

The containment invariants

Five things are true of every Observe Mode call, and they’re the whole reason it’s safe to leave switched on with no signup:

  1. Your key travels with the call and is never vaulted. You send the credential on the X-AV-Observe-Credential header of each request. It’s applied in memory to the outbound call and discarded. AgentValet never writes it to a database, a log, or a vault.
  2. Audit rows are metadata only. Each relayed call writes one observed row: platform, endpoint, method, status, latency, and request/response size. Anywhere the credential value itself would otherwise leak into that metadata, it’s explicitly redacted before the row is written.
  3. No request or response bodies are kept. The upstream response is relayed back to your agent, but it is not persisted. Only the shape of the call (the fields above) is written to the audit row.
  4. Retention is 24 hours. A trial organisation is ephemeral and expires 24 hours after it’s created. Once it expires, its audit rows stop being reachable through the feed.
  5. The relay only reaches a vetted catalog host. The upstream base URL comes from the platform catalog, not from anything in your request. Path traversal, scheme injection, and private/link-local/metadata-address targets are all rejected before a call goes out.

There’s also a global rate cap and a per-trial rate limit, both there to keep the free, unauthenticated relay from being abused as an open proxy rather than to shape your workflow.

The try flow

  1. Start a trial. Visit the try page and pass a bot check. You get back a one-time enrollment code (expires in 30 minutes) and a download for the AgentValet extension.
  2. Install and enroll. Drag the bundle into your MCP client, paste the enrollment code, and fill in the platform you want to watch (for example github, slack, or stripe) and your own API key for it. The key is stored on your machine by your MCP client and sent with each call; AgentValet never stores it.
  3. Call the platform. Ask your agent to do something on that platform. The call relays through /v1/observe/actions.
  4. Watch the feed. Open the private feed link for your trial and watch calls land within a few seconds, each one showing platform, method, endpoint, status, and latency.

Leave the platform and key fields blank and the trial has nothing to relay, so nothing shows up in the feed.

The upgrade path

Observe Mode’s audit trail is temporary by design: it lives for 24 hours and then it’s gone. If you sign in once and claim the trial into a real account, every call recorded so far moves with you and is kept for your plan’s retention period from then on. Nothing about the calls you already made needs to be re-run. That’s also the point at which real governance switches on: scopes, approval flow, and the ability to actually deny a call, none of which Observe Mode does.

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