Harden

Overview

Harden Agentic Integrity Foundation (AIF) is a free, local security tool designed for AI coding agents. Its proprietary post-trained models check tool calls before they run, evaluating the request and session context to prevent dangerous actions. It operates entirely on-device, ensuring that repositories and tool outputs never leave the user's machine while providing independent oversight.

What it does

• Runs custom cybersecurity models locally to check AI agent tool calls before they execute.
• Blocks dangerous actions such as risky shell commands, data deletion, or unauthorized environment modifications.
• Hooks natively into supported coding agents or acts as an MCP proxy for other tools.
• Can allow, block, ask for user approval, or dynamically modify risky actions into safe retries.

Who it's for

• Developers
• Security Teams
• AI Researchers
• Engineering Leaders

Why it works

• Operates entirely on-device, ensuring proprietary code and infrastructure details never leave the machine.
• Provides independent security oversight, separating guardrails from base models that are incentivized to optimize for speed.
• Prevents agents from taking dangerous shortcuts or executing bad actions when operating autonomously.
• Offers a core free version that requires no account and includes an explicit telemetry opt-out.

Founder story

Founded in 2026 by Pushpak Pujari and Pushpendre Rastogi, who previously held roles at AWS IoT and Google DeepMind. They built Harden to secure the 'dark software factory,' realizing that autonomous agents required independent security guardrails separate from the frontier LLM providers.

Alternatives

• HOL Guard
• EDAMAME Security
• SolonGate
• Kastra

Comparison overview

• Harden runs its post-trained cybersecurity models locally to evaluate and intercept tool calls before execution, whereas hosted agent-monitoring layers require sensitive repository data to leave the user's machine.