Policies

A policy is a rule that watches something in your account, such as an agent or a member, and acts when a condition is met. A policy can do things like pause an agent that goes over budget or notify the owner when a deployment fails. Each policy pairs one trigger with the steps that run when it fires.

Before you start

To complete this guide, you’ll need the following:

• An Astropods account at astropods.com. You sign in to the web app to write and manage policies.
• At least one deployed agent. A policy watches agents, so with none deployed there is nothing for a trigger to match.

Turn the Policies experiment on or off

Policies are an experimental feature you can turn on or off. When the Policies experiment is on, the Policies page and each agent’s Policies menu item appear in every account you open, including organizations. The feature’s on/off state is saved in your browser, so you need to turn the Policies experiment on again if you open Astropods in a different browser.

To turn the Policies experiment on or off, do the following:

1. At astropods.com, click your profile picture at the top right, select Settings, then click Experiments in the left menu. This menu opens your personal account’s settings, where the Policies experiment is listed. An organization’s Experiments page doesn’t list it.
2. Turn the Policies experiment on or off.

Turning the Policies experiment off hides the page and menu item. It doesn’t delete your policies or turn off the ones that are on.

Create a policy

A policy starts as a description in plain language. Astropods writes the policy from your description and shows it as a flow chart with the trigger at the top and the steps beneath it. You read the policy and edit it before it runs.

To create a policy, do the following:

1. At astropods.com, click Policies, then click New policy.

2. In the box under Build a new policy, describe what you want the policy to do. For example:

   Pause any agent that spends more than $1,000 in a billing period,
   and tell the owner which one it was and what it had spent.

   To start from a ready-made policy, click the lightbulb (Try example). To start from a trigger instead, pick one under or pick a trigger, set its values in the panel that opens on the right, then continue at step 6.

3. Click Send (the arrow) or press Enter. Astropods shows the trigger and steps, and replies in a panel at the bottom of the page.

4. To see the whole policy, click the down arrow beside Send to hide the conversation. You can also drag the canvas to move the policy into view.

5. To edit a step, select it and change its values in the panel that appears on the right.

6. To add a step, click the plus at the bottom of the policy or hover between two steps and click the plus sign that appears, then choose a step.

7. To limit the policy, select the trigger and set Applies to. An agent trigger offers Every agent, Only these agents, and Every agent except these. A member trigger offers the same choices for members.

8. Click Save policy.

Astropods names the policy and replies with a summary of what it built and how it tested it. If your description names no agent, the policy applies to all agents. Use Applies to to limit it.

A saved policy is off by default until you turn it on. The account’s Policies page lists every policy, grouped under Account-wide and under each agent’s name. See Turn a policy on or off.

To see each time a policy ran and what it did, open the policy and click History.

Triggers

A trigger is the condition a policy watches. Every policy has one.

A trigger watches every matching agent or member in the account, and the policy runs once for each match.

Steps

Steps run in order after the trigger fires.

A notification takes an optional headline and message. Both accept placeholders such as {{agent.name}}, and Astropods writes them for you when you leave them blank. The Pause every running agent step shows how many agents it would stop today.

Test a policy

A test checks what a policy would do without doing it. A test stores nothing and takes no action, so it never pauses an agent or sends a notification. A policy needs a trigger and at least one step before you can test it.

When you create a policy, Astropods tests it and reports the result in its reply. Click View test results to see each scenario marked Fired or Did not fire, with the values it used.

To test a policy yourself, do the following:

1. At astropods.com, click Policies, then click the policy.
2. Click Test run.
3. Choose how to test:
   • Auto test your policy tries a range of scenarios, including values at the boundary, some that should fire the policy and some that should not, and reports what happened.
   • Set up a manual test opens Test scenarios. Enter the agent’s name, status, deployment outcome, spend, last active time, and requests, or click Load from an agent to start from one of yours. Click Run test, and Astropods highlights the steps the policy would take.

Turn a policy on or off

A policy acts only while it’s on. A saved policy is off by default until you turn it on.

To turn a policy on or off, do the following:

1. At astropods.com, click Policies.
2. On the policy’s card, use the toggle at the lower right to turn the policy on or off.

Limits

• Policies act inside one account. A policy never reaches into another account.
• A personal account has one member, so it offers no member triggers.
• A policy fires once per condition. It does not repeat until the condition clears and the period resets.
• A policy reacts to events. It doesn’t control who can use an agent. To set that, see Access control.

Next steps

• Working with accounts: organizations, members, and roles
• Usage limits: quotas and limits on your account’s usage
• Usage: see what your agents and members spend