The AI agent control plane

An AI agent control plane is the infrastructure layer that governs AI agents in production. It routes every call to the right model, records what each agent did with full context, enforces policies such as PII masking and tool call restrictions, and keeps an audit trail that compliance teams can export. Opper implements this as five layers: observe, route, steer, guard, and comply.

An LLM gateway is the routing layer, one API in front of many models with fallbacks and cost tracking. A control plane includes that gateway and adds the governance production agents need: observability with quality scoring, steering to lift output quality, guardrails on requests and responses, and compliance reporting. On Opper both share one API, so you can start with routing and turn on the rest when you need it.

Yes. Every call is logged with user attribution, the model that served it, tokens, cost, latency, and the policies that applied. Sessions group calls into the conversations users actually had, and logs are export-ready for SOC 2, GDPR, and DORA audits.

Guardrails inspect requests and responses in real time. PII is masked before data reaches a model, and you can enforce content filtering, topic blocking, tool call restrictions, and prompt injection detection at the infrastructure level, alongside budget caps and model allowlists per workload.

Opper is pay as you go with no subscription and no markup on token rates. Control Plane capabilities are an optional tier on top of the gateway, priced as a slightly higher fee on credit purchases. Current rates are on the pricing page.