ServiceNow announced two linked releases aimed at the core problem of enterprise agentic AI: letting tools act across company systems while keeping them inside approved limits.

The governance piece is AI Passport, a cryptographically signed credential issued through ServiceNow's AI Control Tower that defines an agent's identity, permitted actions, accessible systems and accountable owner, with checks performed as work executes rather than before.

The productivity piece extends EmployeeWorks with no-code Productivity Assistants and background Productivity Routines that employees customize by dragging, configuring and deploying inside administrator-defined guardrails.

A new ToolSmith environment builds tools and integrations from natural-language instructions, and a Conversations API lets firms embed these capabilities in internal apps, kiosks and messaging services. Pricing pairs seat licenses with bundled AI credits called assists.

The surprising part for builders is that enforcement happens at the point of execution, not in advisory policy documents.

In a demonstration, ServiceNow configured a third-party customer service agent to process refunds below $25 while disabling unrelated capabilities: an $18 refund proceeded automatically, but a $40 request was rejected at runtime because it exceeded the threshold for human review.

'Without that baseline, every guardrail is just advisory,' said Nenshad Bardoliwalla, senior vice president of AI products at ServiceNow, according to SiliconANGLE.

Organizations also get graduated control — 'it's more like a dimmer switch,' Bardoliwalla said — pausing an agent by revoking session tokens, restricting its endpoints, or deactivating it by revoking credentials, with restoration recorded alongside an explanation.

Nvidia is a design and launch partner, linking AI Passport with its Open Agent Safety Platform, including the OpenShell secure runtime and Sentry security framework, so enterprise policies bind inside the infrastructure where agents actually operate.

Nvidia's director of cybersecurity product marketing, Itay Ozery, framed the challenge as 'making your enterprise policy meaningful at the point of execution.'

ServiceNow says the credential uses open specifications so other governance products, identity providers and enforcement systems can issue and verify credentials, and the design supports third-party agents as well as ServiceNow's own — a notable choice, since it positions the credential as vendor-neutral plumbing.

AI Control Tower is also gaining shadow AI detection, more than 400 vendor connectors, and AI Cost Management that consolidates spending across frontier models, embedded AI, hyperscalers and data center GPUs.

AI Passport, shadow AI detection and AI Cost Management arrive later this quarter, while Operational Resilience for financial institutions is available now; the EmployeeWorks assistants, routines, harness, ToolSmith and Conversations API are in controlled availability.

Early users see real friction: NTT Data is using AI Control Tower against shadow IT and beginning EmployeeWorks adoption, and its Jamie Robins said overlapping AI tools, duplicate use cases and fragmented employee systems mean 'it takes time to consolidate processes, systems, tools, data.'

If runtime credentials catch on, agent governance could shift from audit paperwork to enforceable infrastructure.