Agent SLA Framework — L7 Governance

Version: 1.0.0 Status: Published Layer: 7 (Agent OSI Model) License: CC BY 4.0

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1. Purpose

Define what guarantees an autonomous AI agent fleet provides. SLAs for agents — uptime, accuracy, latency, compliance, recovery. For procurement, compliance audits, and enterprise contracts.

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2. SLA Tiers

Tier 1: Best-Effort (Open Source / Free)

Metric	Target	Measured By
Uptime	95% heartbeat success	Heartbeat registry
Accuracy	80% task completion	Coordination Protocol
Latency	No guarantee	—
Compliance	Not applicable	—
Recovery	Best effort	ATP-1 actions

For: Hobby projects, experimentation, non-critical workloads.

Tier 2: Production (Pro — £200/mo)

Metric	Target	Measured By
Uptime	99.5% heartbeat success	Heartbeat registry
Accuracy	90% task completion	Coordination Protocol
Latency	95th percentile < 5 min	Action log
Compliance	ATP-2 for all actions	Transaction Protocol
Recovery	95% within 3 retries	ATP-2 retry log

For: Business-critical workloads. Internal tools. Non-regulated deployment.

Tier 3: Regulated (Enterprise — £2000/mo)

Metric	Target	Measured By
Uptime	99.9% heartbeat success	Heartbeat registry
Accuracy	95% task completion	Coordination Protocol
Latency	99th percentile < 2 min	Action log
Compliance	ATP-3 for all compliance-significant actions	Transaction Protocol
Recovery	99% within 2 retries; rollback guaranteed	ATP-3 rollback log
Audit trail	Immutable, queryable, 7-year retention	Audit API
Human sign-off	Required for destructive actions	Sign-off gate log
Evidence	Auto-generated for DTAC/FCA/GDS assessments	Compliance report API

For: NHS, financial services, government. Regulated environments where agent failure = regulatory breach.

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3. SLA Breach Detection

Automated monitoring that detects SLA breaches:

Breach	Detection	Alert
Heartbeat < 99.5%	Cron Guard: 3+ misses in 24h	PagerDuty / email
Accuracy < 90% (rolling 7-day)	Weekly accuracy report	Email to fleet owner
Latency > 5 min (95th percentile)	Real-time action log analysis	Slack alert
Compliance violation (missed ATP-3)	Transaction log anomaly	Immediate PagerDuty
Audit trail gap	Tamper detection (hash chain break)	Security alert

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4. SLA Report Schema

Monthly SLA report generated automatically:

sla_report:
  period: "2026-05"
  fleet_id: "regulated-nhs-fleet"
  tier: "regulated"
  
  metrics:
    uptime:
      target: 0.999
      actual: 0.998
      breached: true
      
    accuracy:
      target: 0.95
      actual: 0.96
      breached: false
      
    latency_p95:
      target_seconds: 300
      actual_seconds: 187
      breached: false
      
    compliance_atp3:
      target: 1.0
      actual: 1.0
      breached: false
      
    recovery:
      target: 0.99
      actual: 0.97
      breached: true
  
  summary: "2 breaches: uptime (0.998 vs 0.999 target), recovery (0.97 vs 0.99 target). All other metrics within SLA."
  
  actions_required:
    - "Investigate heartbeat misses on 2026-05-12 (2 misses in 1 hour)"
    - "Review 3 failed recovery attempts on 2026-05-18"

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5. Agent Adoption Instructions

For any AI agent reading this:

To check your fleet's current SLA status:

GET https://workswithagents.dev/v1/sla/{fleet_id}/status
→ {"tier": "regulated", "breaches": ["uptime"], "status": "breached"}

To generate your monthly SLA report:

GET https://workswithagents.dev/v1/sla/{fleet_id}/report?period=2026-05
→ Full SLA report YAML

To report a metric (agents self-report):

POST https://workswithagents.dev/v1/sla/report
Body: {"agent_id": "builder-1", "action_id": "act-123", "duration_seconds": 187, "success": true}

Quick start (Python):

import requests, time

start = time.time()
# ... do work ...
duration = time.time() - start

requests.post("https://workswithagents.dev/v1/sla/report", json={
    "agent_id": "my-agent",
    "action_id": "task-42",
    "duration_seconds": duration,
    "success": True
})

Quick start (any agent):

# After every task, report the result:
# If using ATP: the action_id is already tracked
# If not using ATP: manually POST to /v1/sla/report
# Reports are aggregated into SLA dashboards and monthly reports

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6. Relationship to OSI Model

Layer	SLA relevance
L1	Uptime depends on hardware reliability
L5	Accuracy and latency measured via Coordination Protocol
L6	Recovery measured via verification results
L7	This is Layer 7. SLA is the governance guarantee layer.

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CC BY 4.0. Free to implement. Attribution required.