2026-08-03 01:35 UTCIn-site rewrite5 min readUpdated: 2026-08-03 02:16 UTC

Show HN: A company brain AI agents check before acting

gnt is an open-source governance layer for AI agents. Company rules live as Markdown files in a Git repo; merging a pull request approves them. Agents call its MCP tools—including check_action—before risky actions and receive an allow, block, or needs_human verdict with cited rules. Self-hosting is free; a hosted version is available at gntai.dev.

SourceHacker News AIAuthor: lukaadzic

Uh oh!

There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Notifications You must be signed in to change notification settings

Fork 1

Star 3

BranchesTags

Open more actions menu

Folders and files

NameName

Last commit message

Last commit date

Latest commit

History

8 Commits

.github

apps

bruno

docs

integrations/openclaw

.gitignore

.gitleaksignore

.npmrc

CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

CONTRIBUTING.md

LICENSE

NOTICE

README.md

SECURITY.md

docker-compose.yml

package.json

pnpm-lock.yaml

pnpm-workspace.yaml

setup.sh

turbo.json

Repository files navigation

Run the setup below once and every agent your team runs has a git-native rulebook it has to check over MCP before it acts, approved the same way your code already is: a merged pull request.

Rules live in your repo as files and ship through normal PRs, not a dashboard click.

Agents call check_action over MCP before anything risky (a refund, a delete, a message to a customer) and get back an allow/block/escalate verdict.

Every rule traces back to the git file and the PR that approved it, so "why did the agent do that" always has a paper trail.

Prefer not to run any of this yourself? The hosted version at gntai.dev does the same thing without you standing up a Postgres instance.

gnt prebrain scanning a repo, opening a PR, and getting it merged. A real terminal session, not a mockup.

Get started (30 seconds)

npm install -g @gnt-ai/cli gnt login gnt connect github gnt prebrain

merge the opened PR on GitHub. that merge is the approval

That merge lands a rule file in your connected repo, shaped like this:

your-repo/ └── rules/ ├── refund-approval-threshold.md └── contract-legal-cc.md

Each file is plain markdown with YAML frontmatter:

--- title: Never refund over $500 without a manager status: approved confidence: 0.91 owner_id: finance-team source_citations: [...] source: slack tags: [refunds, finance] last_validated_at: 2026-07-20 version: 1 superseded_by: null approved_by: [email protected] approved_at: 2026-07-21T14:03:00Z created_at: 2026-07-18T09:12:00Z pr_number: 142 pr_url: https://github.com/your-org/your-repo/pull/142 ---

Refunds over $500 need manager sign-off before they go out...

See it in action

There's no captured transcript to show yet (see the gap noted at the bottom of this README). Here's the actual response shape a check_action call returns, straight from the tool's contract:

{ "verdict": "blocked", "reason": "Refund exceeds the $500 threshold without manager sign-off (rules/refund-approval-threshold.md)", "cited_rules": [ { "id": "refund-approval-threshold", "title": "Never refund over $500 without a manager" } ], "rules_retrieved": 3 }

verdict is one of allowed, blocked, or needs_human. needs_human is the fail-closed default: no approved rule covers the action, retrieval failed, or the check couldn't complete. It never guesses.

What it does

One MCP endpoint, five tools:

Tool What it does

check_action Checks a described action against your approved rules before an agent takes it. Returns allowed, blocked, or needs_human with cited rules and a one-line reason.

search_rules Semantic search over your org's approved rules, optionally filtered by tag. An empty list means no approved rule covers the query.

get_rule Fetches one approved rule by id, with its provenance (who approved it, when, what it was cited from).

list_skill_packs Lists every compiled skill pack version for your org, newest first.

get_skill_pack Fetches a compiled skill pack's manifest and file list by id.

Prerequisites

Requirement Check Get it

Node >=22.13 node --version nodejs.org

Install

Method Command

curl curl -fsSL gntai.dev/install.sh | sh

npm npm install -g @gnt-ai/cli

gnt needs Node >=22.13. If the CLI fails to start with a version error, update Node first and confirm with node --version.

Common commands

gnt login # sign in, store an API key locally gnt connect github # connect the repo your rules PRs open against gnt prebrain # scan sources, extract candidate rules, open PRs gnt review # review rules awaiting approval gnt status # show brain status gnt pull # download the latest skill pack gnt gaps # list uncovered queries with no approved rule

Config

Variable Default What it controls

GNT_API_URL https://api.gntai.dev API endpoint the CLI and MCP calls hit

GNT_WEB_URL https://gntai.dev Web app used for gnt login's browser step

GNT_CONFIG_DIR ~/.gnt Where credentials.json and local config live

Privacy

No analytics or telemetry dependency in the CLI or the web app.

gnt prebrain's default extraction mode is cloud, not on-device: your source text goes straight to Anthropic's API (or Vercel AI Gateway with zero-data-retention, if you configure it), never to gnt's own servers. Fully on-device extraction needs --mode local against a local Ollama daemon.

The extracted rule candidates still get sent to gnt's API to open the PR. Raw source text stays off gnt's servers in cloud mode; the resulting rule text doesn't.

Rules live in your connected GitHub repo and in gnt's own database. The MCP tools read from gnt's store, not by cloning your repo on every call.

Self-hosting: apps/api only sends error data to Sentry if you set SENTRY_DSN yourself. Leave it unset and nothing goes out.

Team setup

Who writes rules: anyone with access to your connected repo, either through gnt prebrain (batch-extracted from real sources) or gnt review (hand-proposed).

How approval works: merging the PR is the approval. There's no separate publish step.

What gets committed: rules/.md files with the frontmatter shown above and a plain markdown body.

Troubleshooting

Self-hosting: gnt login's browser step has nowhere to land. gnt login opens a browser to a /cli-login page and polls the API for the resulting key — that page is served by the hosted product's web app, which isn't part of this repo. There's no CLI-only login flow (device code or otherwise) today, and no gnt command to set a key manually. Self-hosting this stack currently means building your own thin frontend for that one route (it just needs to complete the sign-in flow and hand the CLI a key). This is a real, open gap in the self-host path, not a config issue — closing it properly means adding a CLI-only login flow.

ValueError: refusing to start: these settings still have their .env.example placeholder value... A change-me-... string is still sitting in apps/api/.env. The error names every offending field; generate a real value for each and retry.

store fails to start with GNT_STORE_INTERNAL_API_SECRET is not set. apps/store/.env wasn't filled in, or wasn't picked up. Confirm the file exists at that exact path, not still named .env.example.

Every store-to-api call gets rejected with 401 or 403, even though both services are up. STORE_INTERNAL_API_SECRET / APPROVAL_SIGNING_SECRET in apps/api/.env don't byte-for-byte match GNT_STORE_INTERNAL_API_SECRET / GNT_APPROVAL_SIGNING_SECRET in apps/store/.env. This fails closed by design. Regenerate both pairs so the two files agree.

A rule fails to save with an embedding or rerank error. apps/store/.env is missing ZEROENTROPY_API_KEY, or it's still empty. Get a real one from zeroentropy.dev.

Full command reference

gnt login gnt logout gnt connect github, slack, notion-mcp, monday-mcp, linear-mcp, jira-mcp, sentry-mcp, granola-mcp, zoom-mcp, figma, datadog, gitlab-threads, hubspot, airtable, openclaw, hermes gnt disconnect gnt status gnt billing gnt review gnt pull gnt gaps gnt prebrain scan local sources, extract candidate rules, open batched draft PRs (~60 flags for source paths and extraction mode, see gnt prebrain --help; --mode cloud|local, cloud is the default) gnt stale gnt keys list|create|revoke|rotate gnt webhook list|create|revoke gnt org show|rename|invite|remove

Learn more

Self-hosting walkthrough, including the production-hardening path: docs/self-hosting/README.md

Security policy: SECURITY.md

License

Why is this free?

Self-hosting gnt costs you nothing, forever — clone it, run docker compose up, bring your own keys. What we sell is the part self-hosting doesn't give you: hosting at gntai.dev, managed OAuth connectors (GitHub, Slack, Linear, Notion, Zendesk — no app-approval process on your end), and usage-based AI features. If you'd rather run it yourself, that's a fully supported, fully free path, not a crippled trial of the real thing.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for dev setup and how to open a PR. Every commit needs a Signed-off-by trailer (git commit -s), the Developer Certificate of Origin instead of a CLA. No separate form, just the flag.

Topics

Resources

Readme

Apache-2.0 license

Code of conduct

Contributing

Security policy

Activity

Custom properties

Stars

3 stars

Watchers

0 watching

Forks

1 fork

Report repository