SecurityContext¶
In plain terms: an incident responder doesn't think "I'll query Splunk, then
CrowdStrike, then Okta." They think "I'm investigating an incident" — pull the
logs, check the user, enrich the indicator, look at the host. SecurityContext is
that mental model in code: one handle over the security domains. Your agent
reasons in domains — logs, identity, endpoint, threat-intel, cloud, actions —
and never hard-codes a vendor SDK. Point it at your real stack by injecting a
provider; the investigation code doesn't change. The admission-control
machinery on this page — admit(), the policy, the labels — is the product's
general control layer, the same one every domain uses; security is the worked
example.
import asyncio
from tulip.security import SecurityContext
async def main():
ctx = SecurityContext() # zero config — runs offline
await ctx.logs.search("failed login spike", window="6h")
await ctx.identity.risk("[email protected]")
await ctx.threat_intel.enrich("198.51.100.23")
await ctx.endpoint.get_host("WS-0142")
asyncio.run(main())
The domains¶
Each domain is a small Protocol — a port — that a provider implements. The
handle is the same whether the provider is the offline reference or a live vendor.
| Handle | Domain | Methods |
|---|---|---|
ctx.logs |
SIEM / log search | search(query, window="24h") |
ctx.endpoint |
EDR host forensics + containment | get_host, detections, isolate |
ctx.identity |
identity provider (the surface most attacks touch) | get_user, risk, signins, disable |
ctx.cloud |
cloud control-plane evidence (read-only) | describe, events |
ctx.threat_intel |
IOC reputation / enrichment | enrich |
ctx.actions |
decide on and run a response action | request_approval(action, finding=…, verdict=…) · execute(action, perform, finding=…, verdict=…) |
Reads are plain domain calls. Writes — endpoint.isolate, identity.disable —
model real-world actions: run them through the admission gate so they fire only after the chain clears.
Writes are simulated today
In the current build the bundled reference adapters and the vendor
templates (Entra/Okta/Auth0 disable, CrowdStrike isolate) return a
simulated offline-sample receipt — they record the decision but do
not lock an account out or quarantine a host. Wire and verify the live
vendor write path before treating these as enforcement.
Zero-config by default¶
Every domain defaults to a bundled offline reference adapter, so
SecurityContext() works with no credentials, no network, and no vendor account.
The reference identity provider, for instance, returns two deterministic users —
a low-risk [email protected] and a high-risk [email protected] with
impossible-travel sign-ins — so examples, tests, and CI all run the same code path
they would in production, just against benign data.
This matters for adoption: you can write and unit-test an entire investigation offline, then flip individual domains to live vendors one at a time.
Going live — inject a provider¶
Live vendors live in the one-way-dependent
tulip-integrations package.
Core never imports a vendor; you wire them explicitly:
from tulip.security import SecurityContext
from tulip_integrations.identity.auth0 import Auth0Identity
from tulip_integrations.threat_intel.virustotal import VirusTotalIntel
# Identity + threat-intel go live; logs/endpoint/cloud stay on the offline reference.
ctx = SecurityContext(identity=Auth0Identity(), threat_intel=VirusTotalIntel())
Each provider resolves its credentials from the environment and falls back to the offline sample when none are present — so the same code is safe to run in CI.
| Domain | Provider | Vendor | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
identity |
tulip_integrations.identity.auth0.Auth0Identity |
Auth0 | live-verified |
identity |
tulip_integrations.identity.okta.OktaIdentity |
Okta | reference template |
threat_intel |
tulip_integrations.threat_intel.virustotal.VirusTotalIntel |
VirusTotal | live-verified |
endpoint |
tulip_integrations.edr.crowdstrike.CrowdStrikeEndpoint |
CrowdStrike | reference template |
logs |
tulip_integrations.siem.splunk.SplunkLogs |
Splunk | reference template |
cloud |
core tulip.security.aws (pip install tulip-agents[aws]) |
AWS | in core |
A provider is just a class that satisfies the domain port. Writing your own is the same shape as the bundled ones — see Adding an integration.
A full investigation — grounded, verified, gated¶
The facade earns its place in the whole loop, not in any one call. An AI agent
that merely reads telemetry is a chatbot; the moment it can act, three things
have to be true — the data is real, the claim is verified, and the action is
gated. SecurityContext puts the trust spine right in the path:
import asyncio
from tulip.control import Action, verify
from tulip.security import Evidence, SecurityContext, Severity
from tulip_integrations.identity.auth0 import Auth0Identity
async def main():
# Real identity provider. ctx.actions defaults to ControlPolicy(), which sends
# production account-disables to a human.
ctx = SecurityContext(identity=Auth0Identity())
# 1. INVESTIGATE — by domain, against the real Auth0 tenant.
risk = await ctx.identity.risk("[email protected]")
# -> {'user': ..., 'risk': 'high', 'impossible_travel': True}
# 2. FORM A FINDING, then VERIFY it. An independent skeptic challenges the
# evidence and re-scores confidence — a thin claim is refuted, not acted on.
finding = Evidence(
title="Account compromise: impossible-travel sign-ins",
description="High-risk Auth0 user with impossible travel between two sign-ins.",
severity=Severity.HIGH,
asset="[email protected]",
remediation="Disable the account and force a credential reset.",
evidence_refs=["auth0:logs:[email protected]"],
gsar_score=0.86,
)
verdict = await verify(finding)
if not verdict.survives:
return # abstain — no hallucinated containment
# 3. PROPOSE CONTAINMENT — gated by policy through ctx.actions.
decision = ctx.actions.request_approval(
Action(name="disable_user", asset="[email protected]", environment="production"),
finding=finding,
verdict=verdict,
)
# decision.outcome -> "require_human": a person decides, with the evidence
# and the verdict attached. The agent never disables a prod account on its own.
# 4. ON APPROVAL, ACT. NB: in the current build `disable` returns a simulated
# offline-sample receipt — it does not yet lock the account out.
if decision.allowed:
await ctx.identity.disable("[email protected]")
asyncio.run(main())
"require_human" is the held outcome — every decision comes back allowed,
held, or denied, and a held action waits for a person before anything fires.
One investigation, six domains, zero vendor names in the logic. Swap
Auth0IdentityforOktaIdentity, orVirusTotalIntelfor another feed, and steps 1–4 are untouched. That is the platform bet: program against domains — security is one of them — and the trust spine — grounding, verification, policy, and a hash-chained audit trail — applies no matter whose API is behind the port.
The gate in step 3 is a ControlPolicy: require_human_for={"production"} by
default, alongside require_verification_score, max_blast_radius, deny_for,
and min_severity. To enforce a custom policy, call approve(action, policy=…,
finding=…, verdict=…) directly — ctx.actions.request_approval is the
convenience wrapper around it.
verify() is framework-agnostic by design: it accepts a Tulip Evidence or a
finding-shaped dict produced by any other agent (LangGraph, CrewAI, anything),
which is what lets Tulip sit above the stack as the verification layer rather
than competing with the frameworks below it.
Admission control — the enforcement point¶
request_approval() returns a decision; it doesn't run anything. To make the
decision binding, run the action through the admission gate — admit(), or
ctx.actions.execute() on the facade. The side effect fires only if the
chain clears (approve() → ALLOW); otherwise it raises AdmissionError, and the
attempt is recorded to the audit trail either way:
from tulip.control import Action, AdmissionError, verify
verdict = await verify(finding)
try:
await ctx.actions.execute(
Action(name="disable_user", asset="[email protected]", environment="production"),
lambda: ctx.identity.disable("[email protected]"), # the side effect
finding=finding,
verdict=verdict,
)
except AdmissionError as exc:
route_to_human(exc.decision) # production → require_human, so the disable never fired
This is what turns the chain from advisory into enforced: there is no path
through execute() to a side effect that skips evidence, verification, and
policy — and nothing reaches production without leaving an audit record. It's the
admission-controller pattern (think Kubernetes admission webhooks) applied to
agent actions, and it's what makes Tulip a runtime rather than a library of
trust functions.
A policy matches labels, not names¶
Notice what the Action above carries: environment="production". That is what
require_human_for={"production"} matches. A policy never gates on the name
of the action or the tool performing it — it reasons about what the action is:
its environment, its kind, its blast_radius, and any tags.
This has a consequence worth stating plainly: an action that declares nothing
cannot be gated by label. Rather than guess a plausible-looking default, Tulip
labels it environment: "unknown" — honest, but it matches no rule written for
production. Writing require_human_for={"production"} and expecting it to
catch an undeclared action is the one mistake this design invites.
So declaring labels is not documentation. It is the input the policy reasons over, and the thing that lets a tool earn an unattended path:
Action(
name="refund_customer",
environment="production", # which rule set applies
blast_radius=1, # how many subjects one call touches
tags=frozenset({"payment", "irreversible"}),
)
When agents run on the gateway rather than in-process, the same labels come from the tool's registry definition, so a policy author and a tool author can be different people:
# a tool definition in the registry
name: refund_customer
action:
environment: production
kind: payment
tags: [irreversible]
A tool that declares no environment inherits the deployment's
(TULIP_GATEWAY_ENVIRONMENT); if that is unset too, the action is unknown.
From facade to agent — ctx.toolset()¶
The domain handles are the programmatic facade — what your own code calls. When
you want an autonomous tulip.Agent to drive the investigation, hand it the
agent facade instead:
toolset() returns the deduplicated, agent-ready security tool bundle, so the same
domain capabilities are available to the model as callable tools.
The one-way dependency¶
Core (tulip-agents) defines the ports and ships the offline reference providers;
it never imports a vendor. Vendors live in tulip-integrations, which depends
on core — the LangChain-community → langchain-core relationship. You inject
providers explicitly, so there is no hidden vendor coupling and the offline path is
always intact.
See also: Agentic AI-security · Grounded findings · GSAR typed grounding · Threat scenarios · Cloud-posture agent.