Cisco announced Project Quarry as an open-source rule language and engine for analyzing AI-agent traces on October 28, 2026. Developers can follow the repository’s quick start by cloning it, entering its directory, and running uv sync --frozen. The demonstrated input is an OpenAI-shaped JSON conversation with a messages array. (Project Quarry repository)

What Project Quarry examines

Quarry evaluates rules against agent messages, tool calls, results, and the order of events. Cisco says its described scope includes single- and multi-turn conversations, tool use, interactions with the Model Context Protocol (MCP), and multimodal inputs. The repository also says rules are parsed, validated, and compiled when loaded.

A rule can look for patterns in text, structured fields, regular expressions, tool use, or multi-turn flows. Cisco says a finding includes the matching steps and fields, plus a short excerpt; common secret formats are masked. Those details help a team inspect why a trace matched a rule.

The documented setup and input

The basic setup sequence is:

git clone https://github.com/cisco-ai-defense/project-quarry.git
cd project-quarry
uv sync --frozen

Add --extra inference to the sync command when using a built-in model provider. The repository supports Python 3.11 through 3.13 and is licensed under Apache 2.0. (Project Quarry repository)

The example conversation uses JSON shaped like OpenAI’s format, with a messages array. That gives developers a concrete input shape to work toward; it does not mean every agent framework natively emits a compatible trace. Cisco says other frameworks may already log this format or convert their traces to it.

A Quarry finding does not block an action by itself

Quarry evaluates a trace and returns a finding. The product that integrates it decides what happens next: it might alert, block, redact, quarantine, or log. A matching rule alone is therefore not the same as an agent action being stopped.

In its October 28 announcement, Cisco said Quarry was already in production in Cisco AI Defense and described a DefenseClaw integration as planned.

Alpha status and rule changes

The repository labels Quarry as alpha and warns that its rule-language syntax may change before version 1.0.0, potentially requiring rule updates. Teams evaluating it should account for that maturity when writing rules intended to survive future versions.