Aqsa Malik@Aqsa_Malik

ToolFence is a task-scoped security gateway for AI coding agents, built for the IBM Bob 2.0 Hackathon. Its goal is simple: let an AI agent remain useful without giving it unrestricted access to repositories, CI systems, tickets, deployments, or secrets. Instead of granting broad permissions, ToolFence lets IBM Bob reason about the minimum capabilities required for a task. Bob submits a task-specific permission proposal, while a separately trusted developer-defined approval ceiling remains hidden from the model. ToolFence validates the proposal, activates the resulting policy, and then checks every protected tool call before execution. The MVP exposes 11 protected capabilities across tickets, repositories, pull requests, CI, releases, and secrets, plus 4 ToolFence control-plane tools. The system is designed to fail closed: if there is no active policy, a tool is not granted, a resource is outside scope, or arguments are invalid, the action is denied and not forwarded to the backend. Our golden demo uses the task: “Fix BUG-17, run CI, and create a pull request.” ToolFence grants only 6 of 11 available capabilities. A forbidden secret.read request is denied with TOOL_NOT_GRANTED, while the legitimate workflow succeeds through ticket.get, repo.read, repo.write, ci.run, ci.status, and pull_request.create. ToolFence also includes append-only audit logging, runtime policy snapshots, a read-only FastAPI observability layer, and a routed React security dashboard showing policy state, capability boundaries, activity, audit evidence, and benchmark results. In our replay benchmark, ToolFence matched 16/16 cases, blocked 100% of forbidden actions, achieved 0% false denials, 100% boundary-case accuracy, and reduced the active privilege surface by 45.45%. The core principle is: Bob reasons. ToolFence enforces.

💻 Online Hackathon | ⏳ Build: 48 hours | 📅 September 25–27, 2026 The official IBM Bob 2.0 hackathon. Build what's next in AI-assisted development, alongside the developers and experts shaping it. ⭐ Get help from experts throughout the event 🤝 Join a team or build solo 💰 Prize pool: $12,000 🧑🏻‍💻 Register before the Kick-Off Stream to start building with Bob

🌎 Online Hackathon | 📅 August 3–10, 2026| 💻 Powered by native.builder The official native.builder hackathon, hosted by NativelyAI and lablab.ai. Join founders, developers, designers, and builders to create real AI-native applications powered by native.builder: from idea to deployed product, fully in the cloud. 💻 This hackathon is fully online. No travel required.