Guardrails for Decisions Requests

Portkey’s guardrails also cover /v1/decisions, the typed-judgment endpoint. This lets you screen the content a decision is made about before it reaches the model, the same way you would for a chat or embedding request. Guardrails work with both request shapes and every supported provider.

Why Use Guardrails for Decisions?

A decisions request has three parts: model, questions, and the content to judge. The content is state in the Jev shape and input in the OpenAI shape. Only that content is caller-supplied — model and questions (including any criteria, choices, or levels) are your own application’s instructions. Guardrails scan the content alone, so they check what a user or upstream system fed into the judgment, never your prompt design. This matters because the content often carries the same kind of untrusted text you’d otherwise send to a chat model — support tickets, form submissions, extracted document text — before it’s judged, scored, or classified. Guardrails let you catch PII, prompt injection, or policy violations in that content before the judgment call is made.

How It Works

Guardrails for decisions run only at the before-request stage, on the content to judge only:

Your application sends the content to judge, model, and questions to /v1/decisions.
Portkey’s before-request guardrails scan the content — state in the Jev shape, or the text in input in the OpenAI shape. They never scan model, questions, or nested criteria, choices, or levels.
If all checks pass, the request (with the content possibly redacted by a mutator) is forwarded to the provider.
If a check fails, the configured guardrail action applies: log only, soft-deny with a 200, or hard-deny with a 446.

There are no after-request (output) guardrails on /v1/decisions. A successful answer is a typed judgment — a choice, a score, or a probability — with no free text to scan, so only input_guardrails apply. This mirrors Guardrails for Embeddings.

Redacting the Content

Mutator guardrails (for example, PII redaction) can rewrite the content before it’s forwarded. Redaction is written back into the shape the request used. Jev shape (state)

If state was a plain string, the redacted text replaces it directly.
If state was a JSON object or array, the redacted text is parsed back into JSON before being written back.
If a mutator’s output is no longer valid JSON for an object/array state, Portkey keeps the original state unchanged rather than forwarding corrupted content.

OpenAI shape (input)

If input was a string, the redacted text replaces it.
If input was a list of messages, each message’s text is redacted in place. Message role and non-text parts such as input_image are left unchanged. Only message text and input_text parts are scanned.

Response When a Guardrail Fails

A hard deny (deny: true, no soft-deny) returns 446 with the standard guardrail error shape:

{
  "error": {
    "message": "The guardrail checks defined in the config failed. You can find more information in the `hook_results` object.",
    "type": "hooks_failed",
    "param": null,
    "code": null
  },
  "hook_results": {
    "before_request_hooks": [ /* per-check verdicts */ ],
    "after_request_hooks": []
  }
}

A soft deny (deny: true, softDeny200: true) returns 200 with empty answers instead of an OpenAI-style error envelope, keeping the response shape consistent with a normal decisions response. answers is {} for a Jev-shaped request and [] for an OpenAI-shaped request:

{
  "answers": {},
  "message": "The guardrail checks defined in the config failed. You can find more information in the `hook_results` object.",
  "hook_results": {
    "before_request_hooks": [ /* per-check verdicts */ ],
    "after_request_hooks": []
  }
}

Setting Up Guardrails for Decisions

1. Create a Guardrail

Navigate to the Guardrails page and click Create.
Select a check that supports beforeRequestHook (for example, PII Detection, Regex Match, Moderate Content).
Configure the check parameters and set the action for failed checks (log, soft-deny, or hard-deny).
Save the guardrail to get its ID.

Only guardrails that support beforeRequestHook run on /v1/decisions. Guardrails scoped to afterRequestHook only are skipped for this endpoint.

2. Add the Guardrail to Your Config

{
  "input_guardrails": ["gr-xxx", "gr-yyy"]
}

3. Use the Config with a Decisions Request

cURL

curl https://api.portkey.ai/v1/decisions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-portkey-api-key: $PORTKEY_API_KEY" \
  -H "x-portkey-config: pc-xxx" \
  -d '{
    "model": "@your-typesafe-slug/jev-latest",
    "state": "Help! My payouts have been failing for 3 days.",
    "questions": {
      "department": {
        "type": "choice",
        "instructions": "Which team should handle this?",
        "criteria": { "billing": "Payments", "technical": "Bugs" }
      }
    }
  }'

Learn More

Guardrails Overview

Create guardrails, configure actions, attach to requests

Supported Endpoints & Capabilities

Where guardrails run across the gateway

Decisions API

Request shapes, supported providers, and question types

TypeSafe (Jev)

Provider setup and quick start for /v1/decisions

List of Guardrail Checks

All built-in and partner checks

Introduction

Product

Self-Hosting

Support

Why Use Guardrails for Decisions?

How It Works

Redacting the Content

Response When a Guardrail Fails

Setting Up Guardrails for Decisions

1. Create a Guardrail

2. Add the Guardrail to Your Config

3. Use the Config with a Decisions Request

Learn More

Guardrails Overview

Supported Endpoints & Capabilities

Decisions API

TypeSafe (Jev)

List of Guardrail Checks

Portkey is now PRISMA AIRS AI Gateway. See it in action.

​Why Use Guardrails for Decisions?

​How It Works

​Redacting the Content

​Response When a Guardrail Fails

​Setting Up Guardrails for Decisions

​1. Create a Guardrail

​2. Add the Guardrail to Your Config

​3. Use the Config with a Decisions Request

​Learn More

Guardrails Overview

Supported Endpoints & Capabilities

Decisions API

TypeSafe (Jev)

List of Guardrail Checks

Portkey is now PRISMA AIRS AI Gateway. See it in action.

Why Use Guardrails for Decisions?

How It Works

Redacting the Content

Response When a Guardrail Fails

Setting Up Guardrails for Decisions

1. Create a Guardrail

2. Add the Guardrail to Your Config

3. Use the Config with a Decisions Request

Learn More