Many humans, many agents
Agent registry
An agent registry is an inventory of every agent in an organization recording its name, purpose, owner and escalation contact, the surfaces it runs on, what it may read and write, the identity it runs under and the data it touches, reviewed on a fixed cadence.
Control sits with the person
When to use it
From the second agent onward. Registries are much cheaper to start than to retrofit.
What it prevents
Agent sprawl, named by Gartner in April 2026: old agents accumulate, dependencies go unmapped, and nobody can say which version is running.
Where it stands
A standard shape across enterprise agent governance practice, usually part of a control plane sitting outside the build and orchestration layers.
This entry is a design position rather than a documented pattern. No shipped product and no published paper is cited for it.
Related patterns: Agent identity · Permission parity