Code Ownership Enforcement for Coding Agents

The problem

• A coding agent can find a correct fix in code its team doesn’t own, and make it anyway.
• Without MACAW, it edited the security team’s login library in 11 of 11 runs.

What MACAW does

• Enforces the ownership boundary on every write: edit, redirect, copy, move and delete.
• Refused all 50 replayed edits into the security team’s code.
• In the team’s own code, the agent still fixes the bug. The rest goes to the owners.

What’s different

• Ownership enforced, not just written down in CODEOWNERS.
• One rule covers every way of making the same change.
• Separates a correct fix from an authorized one.

Policy and deployment

Policy

Agents write only to code their team owns.

Deploy

The MACAW plugin and sidecar beside Claude Code or Codex. npm install -g macaw-ai, then macaw-ai install.