🚀 Quickstart & Installation

```bash

Or install with specific LLM providers:

pip install "guardian_runtime[openai]" pip install "guardian_runtime[anthropic]" pip install "guardian_runtime[gemini]"

Or install everything (Providers, ML Scanner, Document Converter):

pip install "guardian_runtime[all]" ``` Done. No signup, no keys, zero configuration required. All monitoring data stays on your local machine in ~/.guardian_runtime/.

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🎯 Comprehensive Use Cases (Where & How to Use)

Guardian is designed to be universal. Here are the exact ways to deploy it based on your workflow.

⚙️ Advanced Configuration (Policy YAML)

Guardian Runtime is perfectly tuned out of the box with a $10 daily budget and strict secret scanning. If you need custom rules, run guardian_runtime init to create a policy.yaml:

version: "1.0"
agents:
  default:
    llm:
      provider: openai
      default_model: gpt-4o

    input_guard:
      scanner_enabled: true
      jailbreak_detection: true
      scanner_action: block 
      
    cost:
      daily_budget: 5.00        # Instantly block if daily spend exceeds $5.00
      max_input_tokens: 20000   # Block massive context windows to save money
      
    optimizer:
      enabled: true
      terse_mode: true          # Slashes output tokens by forcing terse shorthand

---

3. Production Python Applications (SDK)

Why use it here? If you are building a production chatbot or RAG pipeline, you must ensure your users cannot perform "jailbreak" prompt injections or trick the LLM into leaking internal system prompts.

How to use: Use Guardian as a drop-in replacement for the OpenAI/Anthropic SDK.

import os
from guardian_runtime import GuardianRuntime, GuardianRuntimeBlockedError

os.environ["OPENAI_API_KEY"] = "sk-proj-..."
gr = GuardianRuntime() # Zero-config initialization

try:
    # Protects user input before sending to OpenAI
    response = gr.complete(
        messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "My AWS Key is AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE"}],
        raise_on_block=True
    )
    print(response.content)
except GuardianRuntimeBlockedError as e:
    # Fails cleanly in your app instead of leaking the secret!
    print(f"Blocked Locally: {e.response.violations[0].detail}")

💻 Exhaustive CLI Command Reference

Guardian ships with a powerful suite of offline CLI tools. All data is stored purely locally in ~/.guardian_runtime/. Below is a detailed dive into every command, its flags, and exactly how and why to use it.

🏗 Architecture & The Security Pipeline

Guardian intercepts traffic at the network layer or via SDK, passing it through a strict verification pipeline before it ever reaches the cloud.

  Agent / Dev                 Guardian Runtime                   Cloud LLM
       │                             │                               │
       │  1. Prompt + Context        │                               │
       │ ──────────────────────────▶ │                               │
       │                             │                               │
       │                             │ [Security Firewall]           │
       │                             │ ├─ Scan AWS Keys / Secrets    │
       │                             │ └─ Block if Threat Detected ──┼─ (Drops Request)
       │                             │                               │
       │                             │ [Token Optimizer]             │
       │                             │ ├─ Compress Whitespace        │
       │                             │ └─ Terse Mode (Output Trim)   │
       │                             │                               │
       │                             │ [FinOps Budget]               │
       │                             │ ├─ Check Daily Spend Limit    │
       │                             │ └─ Block if $5 Limit Hit ─────┼─ (Drops Request)
       │                             │                               │
       │                             │  2. Sanitized Prompt          │
       │                             │ ────────────────────────────▶ │
       │                             │                               │
       │                             │  3. LLM Response              │
       │                             │ ◀──────────────────────────── │
       │                             │                               │
       │                             │ [Output Guard]                │
       │                             │  Audit for Leaked PII/Secrets │
       │                             │                               │
       │  4. Safe Response           │                               │
       │ ◀────────────────────────── │                               │
       │                             │                               │

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🔌 Supported Integrations

Guardian Runtime acts as an HTTP proxy or a native Python SDK, meaning it integrates effortlessly with almost any modern AI tool without modifying their internal code.

• Visual IDEs: Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code (via Cline/RooCode)
• Terminal Agents: Claude Code, Aider, GitHub Copilot CLI
• Frameworks: LangChain, AutoGen, LlamaIndex, CrewAI
• LLM Providers: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini (via OpenAI compatibility layer)
• Supported Models: Claude Fable 5, Claude Opus 4.8, GPT-4o, Gemini

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