Developers are racing to embed AI agents that call tools and automate workflows, but a growing danger lurks when those agents exceed their intended authority. The term Excessive Agency describes situations where an agent’s autonomy, persistence, or scope outpaces the controls its creators set, turning helpful automation into an unchecked actor.

Typical code patterns fuel the problem: agents receive broad tool access—databases, APIs, cloud resources—and decide when to write data without explicit gates; they run open‑ended planning loops that never terminate; and they retain persistent memory, allowing a single mistaken assumption to linger indefinitely. These traits expand the blast radius of any prompt‑injection or mis‑directed command.

Security teams respond by applying the Principle of Least Agency: limit each agent’s autonomy to the minimum required, insert policy‑driven gates between reasoning and execution, log internal deliberations for runtime visibility, and enforce mandatory human approval for high‑impact actions. Watching for unchecked tool permissions and continuous planning loops will indicate whether the risk is being tamed.