Why Relay
Coding agents already write, run, and call tools inside your repos. Relay makes that work visible, policy-aware, and auditable—without slowing the engineer who is shipping.
The operating reality
IDE agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, OpenCode) sit on the same path as production change: shell, filesystem, MCP, and prompts. Informal norms do not scale across teams, contractors, and overnight sessions. Relay puts org policy on that path, with a verdict before side effects and a record after.
What Relay is for
| Need | Relay delivers |
|---|---|
| See | Inventory of governed tools and live sessions across surfaces |
| Control | Bash, path, MCP, and prompt rules evaluate before actions run; Behavior Guards catch session patterns |
| Prove | Tamper-evident decisions for review, compliance, and replay |
Engineers keep speed on allowed work. Soft ask pauses only where policy requires a human. Denied calls return a clear reason—not a silent failure.
Design principles
- Policy before side effects — Hooks and bridges decide allow / ask / deny in milliseconds.
- Same ladder everywhere — Control rules and Behavior Guards share warn → ask → deny.
- Surface-aware — Claude, Cursor, Codex, and OpenCode are first-class; events carry
surfacefor audit. - Complementary to models — Relay governs actions. Route model traffic separately via AI Gateway (
/gateway/cursor,/gateway/anthropic) when you want Exemplar for both.
Who adopts Relay
- Platform and security teams that need a single control plane for coding agents
- Engineering orgs standardizing Claude, Cursor, Codex, or OpenCode at scale
- Teams that already use Marshal for production agents and want the same accountability in the IDE
What you get next
- Connect a surface — Connect or
/exemplar-relayvia IDE skills - Start with allowlists that match how your teams already work
- Tighten Soft ask and Behavior Guards as confidence grows
Product hub: exemplar.dev/relay · Pricing: exemplar.dev/pricing .
Relay pairs with Marshal for production AI operations. Buy either alone or Full Platform for both. See also Why Marshal.