ServiceNow Inc. today announced new controls for governing artificial intelligence agents alongside updates to its EmployeeWorks information portal (pictured) that let employees build specialized assistants and automate routine tasks without writing code.

The announcements address two connected challenges for businesses expanding their use of autonomous AI: giving workers tools that can act across enterprise systems and ensuring those tools stay within approved boundaries.

The centerpiece of the governance announcement is AI Passport, a cryptographically signed credential that defines an agent’s identity, permitted actions, accessible systems and accountable owner. Issued through ServiceNow’s AI Control Tower governance platform, it is designed to carry those permissions across agents, tools and vendors, with checks performed as work executes.

“Without that baseline, every guardrail is just advisory,” said Nenshad Bardoliwalla, senior vice president of AI products at ServiceNow.

The company says identifying agents and monitoring their behavior aren’t enough without enforceable limits on their authority. AI Passport draws on business context from ServiceNow’s configuration management database, governance policies and workflow approvals to establish those limits.

In a demonstration, ServiceNow configured a third-party customer service agent to process refunds below $25 while disabling unrelated capabilities. An $18 refund proceeded automatically, but a $40 request was rejected at runtime because it exceeded the threshold for human review.

‘Dimmer switch’ for agents

The approach supports graduated responses when agents exceed their authority. Organizations can pause an agent by revoking session tokens, restrict its access to approved tools and endpoints or deactivate it by revoking credentials. Agents can subsequently be restored with a recorded explanation.

“It’s more like a dimmer switch,” Bardoliwalla said. “You monitor, you pause, you restrict, and eventually, if necessary, you deactivate.”

Nvidia Corp. is a design and launch partner, linking AI Passport with its Open Agent Safety Platform, including the OpenShell secure runtime and Sentry security framework. The integration connects enterprise policies with enforcement within the infrastructure where agents operate.

The central implementation challenge is “making your enterprise policy meaningful at the point of execution,” said Itay Ozery, Nvidia’s director of product marketing for cybersecurity.

ServiceNow said AI Passport uses open specifications so other governance products, identity providers and enforcement systems can issue and verify credentials. It is intended to support third-party agents as well as ServiceNow’s own.

AI Control Tower is also expanding discovery, observability and financial oversight. Additions include shadow AI detection, more than 400 vendor connectors for discovery, access mapping and monitoring of agent behavior. Cost capabilities track spending by user, department and runtime, while connecting consumption and quality with business value.

AI Cost Management consolidates spending on frontier models, AI embedded in software services, hyperscalers and data center graphics processing units. A separate Operational Resilience offering brings governance, risk and security together for financial institutions.

Employee controls

The EmployeeWorks updates extend that governance strategy into everyday work. Its third-generation employee-focused AI harness combines reasoning, memory and connections to business systems, with administrator-defined controls over what employees can build and access.

Productivity Assistants target work requiring context specific to a job or business function. Employees can customize behavior, information sources and tools. Initial offerings include research and calendaring assistants, along with human resources-focused assistants for talent insights, HR business partners and managers.

Productivity Routines handle repeatable work in the background. A sales employee, for example, could automate reviewing upcoming meetings, researching prospects and assembling account materials before the workday begins.

“There’s no coding required. It’s drag and configure and deploy all within these guardrails,” said Bhavin Shah, senior vice president of ServiceNow’s employee experience group.

For developers, the new ToolSmith environment builds tools and integrations from natural-language instructions. ServiceNow said ToolSmith is trained on more than 75,000 application programming interfaces and can plan integrations, retrieve logs, suggest fixes and support testing. Shah said it uses governed connectors to read and write enterprise data in a preproduction development environment.

A Conversations API lets organizations embed EmployeeWorks capabilities in internal applications, kiosks, messaging services and other AI applications.

NTT Data Inc. is using AI Control Tower to address shadow IT and is beginning to adopt EmployeeWorks, said Jamie Robins, head of the company’s ServiceNow practice. Among the challenges the company faces are overlapping AI tools, duplicate use cases and fragmented employee systems. NTT Data hopes to simplify employees’ access to services while consolidation continues. “It takes time to consolidate processes, systems, tools, data,” he said during a product briefing.

Pricing combines seat-based licenses with bundled AI credits called assists. Customers needing additional capacity can purchase more credits, and EmployeeWorks uses the same currency as ServiceNow’s other AI products. Bardoliwalla said the model aims to balance predictable budgets with flexibility for customers whose usage grows beyond their initial entitlement.

AI Passport, shadow AI detection and AI Cost Management will be available later this quarter. Operational Resilience for financial services is available now. The new EmployeeWorks assistants, routines, harness, ToolSmith and Conversations API are in controlled availability.

Image: ServiceNow