How do I integrate agent governance without slowing down my agents?

Answer

Three strategies:

1. Hot-path optimization — the real-time check-action call should complete in under 50ms. Use pattern matching and rule evaluation, not LLM calls, for inline checks.
2. Async post-processing — bias detection, drift monitoring, and risk scoring run as background workers after the action completes, not blocking it.
3. Smart gating — only run expensive checks when the action context warrants it (financial transactions get full scrutiny; read-only queries get lightweight checks). Governance latency should be proportional to action risk.