AgentIndex icon
AgentIndex
shellgate logo
shellgate
★ 15
vs
assay logo
assay
★ 13

shellgate vs assay

shellgate: Shellgate acts as a secure gateway between AI agents and your infrastructure, ensuring agents never directly access sensitive credentials like API keys or SSH keys. It enforces granular access control, logs every request, and intercepts dangerous commands for human approval, significantly enhancing the security and audibility of AI agent operations.; assay: Assay provides an open, recomputable evidence profile for privileged AI agent tool actions, enforcing policies deterministically and fail-closed. It records decisions, observations, and unproven claims into tamper-evident bundles for offline verification and security auditing.

01

TL;DR

shellgate logo
shellgateSecurity & Safety · ★ 15

Securely connecting AI agents to external APIs without exposing real credentials.

Read shellgate full review →
assay logo
assaySecurity & Safety · ★ 13

Generating small, reviewable CI artifacts for bounded auditability from existing evaluation outputs, runtime decisions, or MCP tool-call tests.

Read assay full review →
02

Side-by-Side Comparison

Field
shellgate logoshellgate
assay logoassay
Category
Security & Safety
Security & Safety
Stars
★ 15
★ 13
License
MIT
MIT
Install Command
docker run -d -p 3000:3000 -e DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:pass@host:5432/shellgate -e SESSION_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32) ghcr.io/matthiastjong/shellgate:latest
curl -fsSL https://getassay.dev/install.sh | sh
Updated
4mo ago
1d ago
Open Source
Yes
Yes
Website
↗ Visit
↗ Visit
GitHub
↗ GitHub
↗ GitHub
Tags
AI Agent Security, API Gateway, Credential Management
AI Agent Security, Tool Call Enforcement, Evidence Auditing
03

Features

shellgate logoshellgate
01Gateway Proxy for API/SSH with credential injection.
02Scoped and revocable token management for agents.
03Human-in-the-loop guard for dangerous commands/APIs.
04Comprehensive audit logging of all agent activities.
05MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for seamless agent integration.
assay logoassay
01Deterministic, fail-closed policy enforcement for tool calls, including optional kernel-level enforcement on Linux.
02Generates offline-verifiable, tamper-evident evidence bundles for audit and replay, integrated with CI without a hosted backend.
03Classifies claims by their trust basis (verified, self_reported, inferred, absent) to ensure honesty and prevent claims from exceeding observed facts.
04Policy gate (`assay mcp wrap`) for pre-execution allow/deny decisions on privileged tool calls, with clear reasons.
05Integrates with CI/CD pipelines via GitHub Actions and SARIF, enabling policy gates on pull requests and security-tab integration.
04

Use Cases

shellgate logoshellgate
↳Securely connecting AI agents to external APIs without exposing real credentials.
↳Allowing agents to execute commands on remote SSH servers with approval and auditing.
↳Protecting against prompt injection by intercepting dangerous agent commands.
↳Centralized management and revocation of AI agent access permissions.
↳Providing persistent memory and a knowledge base for AI agents.
assay logoassay
↳Generating small, reviewable CI artifacts for bounded auditability from existing evaluation outputs, runtime decisions, or MCP tool-call tests.
↳Processing Promptfoo JSONL output from CI evaluations to produce evidence receipts and verified bundles.
↳Auditing and enforcing policies on MCP (Multi-Modal Command Protocol) tool calls, providing an allow/deny audit trail and observed-behavior evidence.
↳Implementing GitHub PR gates based on Trust Basis diffs and policy status, with SARIF/JUnit-ready output.
↳Generating inventory receipts and verified bundles from CycloneDX ML-BOM model components for model inventory and provenance.
FAQ

FAQ

What is the difference between shellgate and assay?
Both shellgate and assay are in the Security & Safety category. shellgate has 15 stars, while assay has 13 stars.
Which is better, shellgate or assay?
The best choice depends on your use case. Choose shellgate if Securely connecting AI agents to external APIs without exposing real credentials., and assay if Generating small, reviewable CI artifacts for bounded auditability from existing evaluation outputs, runtime decisions, or MCP tool-call tests..
Is shellgate free or open source?
Yes, shellgate is open source on GitHub (MIT).
Is assay free or open source?
Yes, assay is open source on GitHub (MIT).
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