Enterprise information systems were designed for people entering transactions; autonomous software agents can now do much of that work. The paper proposes an agent-native architecture in which every agent has a verified identity and every action is checked against delegated human authority before it runs, then recorded in a log that makes later changes detectable. It sets out how the proposal could be tested, starting with ERP.
The Agent-Native Enterprise Operating System (AE-OS) is a proposed open framework for agent-native enterprise information systems, with ERP as its first application. It assumes digital operations performed mainly by software agents under human authority. The initial architectural hypothesis has four planes that form a control and evidence foundation: business state in an event-sourced knowledge graph sharded across actors (Semantic Data Plane); a short-lived cryptographic identity for every human, agent and tool, with SPIFFE as the candidate standard (Identity Plane); segregation-of-duties, spend and SOX controls evaluated in a sandboxed policy runtime (candidate: WebAssembly) before any action (Compliance Layer); and an append-only Merkle-DAG linking each posting to the signed intent, policy decision, recorded rationale and tool call that caused it (Causal State Ledger). A proposed decomposition of enterprise layers, starting with an Accounting Kernel, sits on that foundation.
The cost model holds the paper's seven-year cost and benefit comparison as live formulas you can change. All figures are modeled for a hypothetical company.
How should enterprise information systems be designed if software agents are their primary operators?
Agents can do most digital operational work without loss of control or auditability, provided identity, business meaning, policy, transaction integrity and evidence are supplied once beneath every agent.
How to cite: Lentz, D. (2026). The Agent-Native Enterprise Operating System. Independent research paper.
The framework and the tools that produce and verify receipts are open source. The paid products are for audit teams and organizations.
A sidecar that runs beside an existing MCP gateway and issues a signed receipt for each agent tool call.
A control matrix for AI agents used in finance, with test steps for each control.
Operational features for organizations, offered first as a self-hosted licence.
The paid offerings are software licences and downloadable documents. Anyone may build on the open components on equal terms.
Issues, pull requests, test vectors and audit experience are welcome. Contributors are credited by name.
Specifications CC BY 4.0 · code Apache 2.0 · maintained by Darren Lentz
Darren is a chartered accountant and certified information systems auditor. He leads a digital trust practice at a global professional services firm, and his work covers financial assurance, cybersecurity and digital trust.