AI Assistant for Compliance and Governance

The thing that stops accountable teams from letting AI act isn't capability — it's not knowing what it will do, or being able to prove what it did. A governed AI assistant answers both. Every action is gated by a human approval, and every action is recorded in a full audit trail. That combination — approval before, record after — is what turns "we can't let AI touch that" into "we can, and here's the proof." Arlo is built this way by default: nothing that leaves a mark goes out until a person signs off, and nothing happens without a trace.

This is governance as a function, not a vertical. Whether you're in a regulated industry or just an accountability-heavy org where a wrong send is expensive, the shape is the same: a human check on consequential actions and a defensible record of every one.

Every action gated by approval

The moment an assistant can send, write, or spend, the question stops being "is it smart?" and becomes "what happens when it's wrong?" Arlo's answer is that consequential actions don't complete on their own. Anything that commits you pauses for the reviewer you name:

• Sends — an email, a message, a reply on your behalf.
• Writes — updating a record, editing a page, opening or closing a ticket.
• Spend and bookings — anything that costs money or commits an external party.

Read-only work — research, summaries, drafts you haven't asked it to send — flows without interruption. The gate lands only where the risk is, so review is a checkpoint, not a bottleneck. This is the same approval-before-sending model, made the default for governed work.

Policy resolves per run

Governance isn't a switch you flip after the fact — it shapes the run from the start. Before Arlo does anything, every tool connection resolves through policy: what it may touch and how far it can go. So the boundaries are decided up front, not discovered after an action already fired.

1. Policy first. Each connection resolves through policy before the run begins.
2. Act up to the line. Arlo reasons, drafts, and does read-only work on its own.
3. Pause at the gate. Any send, write, or spend surfaces for the named reviewer.
4. Record it. The action, its sources, and the approval all land in the trail.

A full, exportable audit trail

You can't govern what you can't see. Every run produces an audit trail: every tool call, every source it read, every human approval, tied back to the original request. Nothing is summarized away — the record is the actual sequence of what happened and why.

	Ungoverned AI assistant	Arlo
Sends and writes by default	Acts on its own	Waits for approval
Who reviews risky actions	No one	A named reviewer
Policy on tools it can touch	Rare	Resolved before every run
Record of what happened	None	Full audit trail
Export for review or audit	No	Yes, on request

That trail is what makes AI usable where accountability matters. When someone asks what the assistant did — a manager, a client, an auditor — there's a complete, exportable record to show, not a black box.

Role-based access for accountable teams

Governance at team scale means the right people hold the right controls. The baseline runs by default for every workspace, from the first dollar — per-run policy checks, approvals on consequential actions, and the full trace. For organisations that need them on top of that, admin policy, role-based access, SSO, and audit export are available on request, so an administrator sets what the assistant may do, roles determine who can approve what, and the trail exports for review.

Governance that supports compliance workflows

Rules like the EU AI Act phasing in through 2026 increasingly expect a human check on consequential automated actions and a record that one was in place. Arlo's approval gate plus audit trail is exactly that: a human in the loop before anything commits, and a defensible record after.

To be clear about what this is: these are governance controls that support your compliance workflows — a human-in-the-loop gate and a complete audit trail — not a claim of specific certifications. Arlo gives your team the mechanism to keep a person on every consequential action and to prove it happened. How that maps to your obligations is yours to define; Arlo makes it enforceable and recordable.

This is the AI colleague model with governance built in — across Slack, iMessage and SMS, Microsoft Teams, and live phone calls, working through 3,000+ tools and no-API browser use, all under the same gate and trail. See how it fits a single workday as an AI executive assistant, or browse more use cases.

Frequently asked questions

What makes an AI assistant "governed"? Three mechanisms working together: policy resolves each tool connection before a run begins, consequential actions pause for a named reviewer instead of completing on their own, and every tool call, source, and approval lands in an exportable audit trail tied back to the original request.

Which actions require approval and which don't? Sends, writes, and spend require it — an email or message on your behalf, updating a record or ticket, anything that costs money or commits an external party. Read-only work flows without interruption: research, summaries, and drafts you haven't asked it to send. The gate lands where the risk is, so review is a checkpoint rather than a bottleneck.

What happens if an approval is never answered? It expires, and an expired approval cannot execute. The request fails closed rather than defaulting to send — so an unattended gate is a blocked action, not a silent one.

Can a reviewer approve something once and not be asked again? Yes, within a boundary you set. An approval can carry a standing grant scoped to a specific tool and action, with a required expiry date. The grant covers that scope until it expires or is revoked; a grant with no future expiry is rejected outright.

Does a reviewer approve or edit the action? Approve or deny. The reviewer sees the tool, the account, and a preview of what would be sent, then decides. There is no edit-in-place step — if the draft is wrong, you deny it and ask for a different one.

Is Arlo compliant with the EU AI Act or SOC 2? These are governance controls that support your compliance workflows — a human-in-the-loop gate and a complete audit trail — not a claim of specific certifications. Rules like the EU AI Act phasing in through 2026 increasingly expect a human check on consequential automated actions and a record that one was in place. Arlo gives you the mechanism and the record; how that maps to your obligations is yours to define.

Can we export the audit trail? Yes. Audit export, along with admin policy, role-based access, and SSO, is available on request. Governance itself — per-run policy checks, approvals, and the full trace — runs by default for everyone, from the first dollar.

Try Arlo

Give an assistant real reach without giving up control. Every action gated by approval, every action on the record. Try Arlo and let AI act where you couldn't before.