Exclusive: Mate Security launches Gamebooks to govern how AI agents run investigations

Security operations startup Mate Security Ltd. today launched Gamebooks, a set of structured investigation procedures that govern what its artificial intelligence agents are allowed to do while working an alert.

Mate is aiming Gamebooks at two failures that have shaped security automation. Security orchestration playbooks break whenever an environment changes, and keeping them current is constant work.

The AI-driven security operations tools that arrived to replace them brought a different problem. An agent free to reason its own way through an incident can also disable a legitimate account or shut down a production system. Most deployments handle that risk by routing consequential actions through a human analyst, which slows the response down.

A Gamebook describes investigative intent instead of an execution path. It sets out what has to be investigated, what evidence must be established, which conditions should redirect the investigation, which actions an agent may take and when that agent has to escalate, stop or request approval. How the agent gets there is left open.

The architecture separates that intent from execution. An orchestrator reads an incoming investigation and assembles the Gamebooks that fit it. Capabilities give agents reusable security skills that are not tied to any one vendor’s product. Flows handle the actual contact with tools and systems, so agents never hold open access to real systems. Grounding comes from Mate’s Security Context Graph, an earlier product that holds an organization’s current state and its history of prior decisions.