locations · san francisco

When the engineer is an AI agent, who approved its access to production?

San Francisco companies are wiring AI agents into code repositories, ticket queues and customer data faster than their access reviews can keep up. Each agent runs on an API key or a service account, and California has started writing rules about automated decisions and frontier models.

in short·20-second read

For San Francisco software, AI and financial firms we work on non-human identity, meaning the API keys, service accounts and AI agents that now outnumber staff.

We inventory them, give each one an owner and a scope, and put secrets on rotation. We also build the evidence trail that CCPA's new automated decisionmaking and risk assessment rules call for. Cohash works from Frisco, Texas, serves the Bay Area remotely, and sends people out for workshops and launches.

No Cohash office or staff is based in San Francisco. We run Bay Area projects remotely from our Frisco, Texas headquarters and come out for architecture workshops, reviews of agent permissions and launch days.

terms on this page Service accountdefinitionA non-human account that software signs in with. Shared ones tend to pick up years of extra permissions.explained in a field note →
Ask an engineer facts checked 2026-10-21 · 8 sources
rules
California Civil Code §1798.82, data breach noticeCCPA regulations on ADMT, risk assessments and auditsSB 53, Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act
who and what

Who we work with in San Francisco, and the rules they work under

industries
  1. AI developers and AI-native software

    Agents that open pull requests, query production databases or answer customers each need an identity, a scope and a way to shut them off. We register agents as first-class identities, issue short-lived credentials through workload identity federation, and log every tool call against the person who delegated the task.

  2. Fintech and payments startups

    A Series B fintech often has more cloud service accounts than employees, plus sponsor-bank and card-network integrations with their own keys. Bank partners ask for access reviews and key management evidence during due diligence, so we set up a vault with rotation and generate the reports a sponsor bank's vendor review expects.

  3. Banks and asset managers

    Older institutions in the Financial District run core banking and mainframe access next to dozens of SaaS tools. Privileged accounts on the core are where examiners look first. We vault them, record sessions and connect HR joiner, mover and leaver events to every downstream entitlement.

regulations
  1. California Civil Code §1798.82, data breach notice ↗

    SB 446 added hard deadlines from January 2026. Residents must hear within 30 calendar days of discovery, and when more than 500 Californians are affected the Attorney General gets a sample notice within 15 days after that. A leaked API key that exposed customer records counts like any other breach.

  2. CCPA regulations on ADMT, risk assessments and audits ↗

    CalPrivacy's package took effect 1 January 2026. Companies using automated decisionmaking technology for significant decisions about consumers must comply from 1 January 2027. Risk assessment attestations are due 1 April 2028, the same day firms with over $100 million in revenue certify their first cybersecurity audit.

  3. SB 53, Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act ↗

    Signed 29 September 2025. Large frontier AI developers must publish a framework on their website describing how they apply safety standards, and the law creates a way to report critical safety incidents to the Office of Emergency Services. It also protects employees who disclose serious risks from frontier models.

01How do we give an AI coding agent repo access without handing it a developer's token?

Give the agent its own identity. We register it as a workload or app identity, scope it to named repositories and actions, and issue short-lived tokens through your identity provider or cloud federation. Every action then logs as the agent, with a link back to the person who started the task.

02Does SB 53 apply to a startup that fine-tunes open models?

The framework and reporting duties target large frontier developers, which the law defines by training compute and revenue thresholds. Most startups fine-tuning existing models fall outside those, though your counsel should check the definitions. The CCPA's automated decisionmaking rules are more likely to reach you if your product makes significant decisions about consumers.

03Our sponsor bank wants evidence of key rotation. What does that look like?

A list of every credential tied to the bank integration, with its owner, where it is stored, when it last rotated and who can read it. We pull that from your vault and cloud key services and schedule rotation so the report regenerates each quarter instead of being assembled by hand before each review.

04Can you help with CCPA risk assessments for our machine learning features?

We document data flows, purposes and safeguards for each feature that processes personal information in the ways the regulations list, and we map who can reach training data. Your privacy counsel draws the conclusions and signs the attestation due in April 2028.

sources 8 sources linked last checked 2026-10-21 content fingerprint 7cd7782e
  1. 01BLS, San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont economy at a glancebls.gov ↗
  2. 02FTC, Uber expanded settlement press release (April 2018)ftc.gov ↗
  3. 03Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, about usfrbsf.org ↗
  4. 04Office of the Governor, SB 53 signing (29 September 2025)gov.ca.gov ↗
  5. 05California Civil Code §1798.82leginfo.legislature.ca.gov ↗
  6. 06Pillsbury, California SB 446 breach notification changespillsburylaw.com ↗
  7. 07California Privacy Protection Agency, regulationscppa.ca.gov ↗
  8. 08Hunton, staggered compliance dates for the 2026 CCPA regulationshunton.com ↗
Reviewed by the Cohash team Product names are trademarks of their owners. how we handle facts and data →
next step

Tell us what you're running. We'll tell you what we'd do first.

A 30-minute working session with a senior engineer. No slides.

useful to bring
  • The platform and the version you're on
  • Where you need to get to, and by when
  • What's custom: rules, plugins, integrations
  • Any audit finding or deadline driving it