AgentGate vs Cisco AI Defense Inspection API

AgentGate

An agent or its host can send each tool call to one REST endpoint, or wrap an MCP server, and get allow, deny or ask from a local classifier and a YAML policy, with an audit log and approval queue. The project is three days old, auth is off by default, and no detection accuracy is published.

Cisco AI Defense Inspection API

Per-connection API keys with expiry, revocation and regeneration, published limits of 60,000 calls a minute, weekly dated release notes and a one-year retention statement suit companies already on Cisco Security Cloud Control. Access needs a subscription bought through sales, with no public price or trial for the API, and the developer changelog has one entry from February 2025.

AgentGate

1. Create a session with the user's real goal first. The goal-alignment head scores every later call against it
2. Pass earlier tool results in history_override with untrusted: true for web or email content, or the injection head sees only the action
3. On ask, stop and tell the user the decision_id. Polling /v1/decisions/:id needs the dashboard key
4. Treat allow_with_checkpoint as allow and keep the checkpoint_id for an undo
5. Expect HTTP 404 with not_found for an unknown session and 401 when the owner has set an agent key

Cisco AI Defense Inspection API

1. Send the key in X-Cisco-AI-Defense-API-Key to POST /api/v1/inspect/chat on the regional host where the tenant was created. US, Europe and Asia Pacific hosts differ
2. If the connection has a policy, enabled_rules in the request is ignored. Pass enabled_rules only for connections with no policy
3. The API never blocks anything itself. Read is_safe and action in the response and enforce the decision in your own code
4. On 429, wait and retry. The organisation has gone over one million tokens in parallel or 60,000 calls a minute
5. Don't request the Toxicity rule. It was removed on 16 September 2026, and the Safety rules such as Hate Speech, Harassment and Profanity replace it