Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Temporal Policies Guide

Quick answer

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore temporal policies add session-aware authorization at the AgentCore Gateway. A policy can permit or forbid the current request based on actions, inputs, and outputs already recorded in the same policy session.

Use them when a request is safe only after a specific sequence: a lookup returned the same identifier, data was refreshed recently, a human approved one sensitive action, or cumulative activity remains below a session cap. Keep stateless permissions for who may call a tool at all; add temporal conditions only where history changes the decision.

Temporal policy is an authorization layer. It does not execute the workflow, inspect facts beyond recorded fields, repair an unsafe argument, or prove the downstream tool succeeded correctly.

What the Gateway evaluates

For each governed request, the policy engine combines:

• the principal, action, resource, and current input;
• matching request, response, or error events from the same policy session;
• the time window declared by the temporal condition;
• all applicable permit and forbid rules.

The model remains deny by default: a matching permit is required, and a matching forbid overrides a permit. AWS documents Dogwood operators for prior events, conditions since an anchor event, and bounded count or sum aggregations.

Seven useful policy patterns

Pattern	Decision it can enforce	Evidence to bind
Workflow sequencing	Step B only after completed step A	Prior response event and resource
Output-to-input integrity	Current ID must match a trusted lookup	Prior output and current input
Data freshness	Sensitive action needs a recent read	Response event and short window
Cumulative cap	Session total stays below a threshold	Bounded sum including current request
One-time approval	One approval authorizes one action	Approval event and later consumption
Mutual exclusion	Conflicting actions cannot coexist	Matching subject and prior action
Progressive trust decay	Write access narrows after inactivity	Latest human interaction and time window

The values in AWS’s banking walkthrough—such as trade amounts and freshness intervals—are examples, not service defaults. Choose thresholds from your own risk model and test boundary cases explicitly.

Session design is part of the control

Send x-amzn-bedrock-agentcore-policy-session-id from the first Gateway request. Current AWS documentation says Gateway does not create the session ID for you; requests without a non-empty ID fail validation when the policy engine contains a temporal policy.

A policy session is scoped by identity as well as the supplied ID. Do not reuse one ID across unrelated work merely to simplify storage. Define a session around the smallest coherent unit that needs shared history, then preserve the identity and Workload Access Token across supported hops.

AWS currently limits a temporal condition’s time window to 24 hours. Starting a new session also starts a new history, so a per-session count or sum is not a global user, account, or billing limit.

Implementation sequence

1. Inventory every Gateway-routed action and its input/output schema.
2. Keep the baseline stateless permit and forbid rules explicit.
3. Define the policy-session owner, start, end, timeout, and retry behavior.
4. Identify which prior response fields a later request must match.
5. Write the smallest temporal window and threshold that expresses the rule.
6. Run the policy in LOG_ONLY against versioned success and denial traces.
7. Promote to ENFORCE only after false-allow and false-deny cases pass.
8. Monitor policy latency, evaluation spans, validation errors, and session conflicts.

AWS notes that adding or updating a temporal policy invalidates active temporal sessions. A reused invalidated session can return HTTP 409, so deployment and rollback plans need an explicit new-session path.

Production boundary checks

Before enforcement, verify the current AWS Region list, quotas, required IAM permissions, and account/Region topology. Current documentation says AgentCore Gateway and its targets must remain in the same AWS account and Region for temporal-policy control across the chain. Non-AgentCore hops must forward the Workload Access Token correctly.

Also verify event semantics. A completed permitted action is recorded as a response; a denied action is recorded as an error. A later rule that looks for a prior response will not match a denied predecessor. When a rule depends on a response field, wait for that response before issuing the dependent request.

Use the temporal policy planner to turn those checks into a bounded implementation record.

Frequently asked questions

What are AgentCore temporal policies?

They are AgentCore Policy rules whose authorization decisions can use earlier actions recorded in the same policy session, rather than evaluating only the current request.

Do temporal policies execute tools or modify requests?

No. They authorize or deny Gateway-routed requests. They do not transform requests, invoke tools, analyze tool output, or orchestrate the agent.

Is a policy session ID required?

Yes. Current AWS documentation says to send x-amzn-bedrock-agentcore-policy-session-id from the first request. If a temporal policy exists, an omitted or empty value fails validation rather than creating a session.

How far back can an AgentCore temporal condition look?

AWS currently documents a maximum 24-hour time window per temporal condition. Individual rules should normally use the shortest window justified by the workflow.

Continue by decision

• Temporal versus stateless AgentCore policy
• Trajectory session ID and 24-hour window
• Tool order and data freshness policy
• Human approval and budget-cap policy
• Dogwood versus Cedar for AgentCore

Official sources

• AWS: Securing AI agents with temporal policies in Amazon Bedrock AgentCore
• Amazon Bedrock AgentCore: Temporal policies

Source check: August 8, 2026. Recheck AWS documentation for current Regions, quotas, identity propagation, enforcement modes, syntax, and pricing before production use.