Glossary
Definition
An agent gateway is the control point through which AI agents reach tools, data, and other agents, enforcing identity, policy, and logging on every call.
An agent gateway sits between agents and everything they act on. It authenticates the agent and the user it acts for, checks each call against policy (which tools, which data scopes, what rate and cost, whether a human must approve), records what happened, and emits telemetry. It plays the role an API gateway plays for services, with the addition of approval holds and per-user delegation.
The gateway is where open standards converge: Model Context Protocol for tool calls, agent-to-agent protocols for delegation, OpenTelemetry for traces, OpenID Connect and SAML for identity, and SCIM for provisioning. Agents from any vendor can connect if they speak these.
Meridian's Gateway registers connected agents in the Registry, enforces approval holds below the agent layer, and exports traces to the observability stack the customer already runs.
Read next
Long-form explainers and frameworks that use this term, dated and signed.
Explainers
MCP explained without jargon: how agents discover and call tools, where tool permissions must be enforced, why the gateway pattern matters, and how OpenTelemetry makes agent runs observable.
Owen Gallagher6 min read
Buying and ROI
Formulas and four worked examples for AI agent ROI in HR and finance, using modeled design-partner outcomes: hours recovered, direct dollars, risk value, what to exclude, and a 90-day measurement plan.
Priya Raman6 min read
Get started
Start with one workflow, one approver, and one number to move. Most design partners were live in five weeks.