What a read-only scan for shadow AI agents found on a live ServiceNow instance

[AlexMcDonald]

Built a read-only scanner for shadow AI on ServiceNow, agents, tools, and credentials that are running but were never inventoried anywhere.

One scan turned up seven agents and eleven credentials, twenty nine findings ranked by severity and confidence. A generative AI service credential had no resolvable owner. Seven of the agents were never registered as agents anywhere the platform would list them, they were scripts and flows quietly calling out to a model.

Detection is rule based, not model judged, so the same instance produces the same findings every run, and every finding is tagged confirmed or needs review rather than a flat yes or no. Verified against a live instance. The writeup documents the bugs I hit building it, including a field mapping defect that meant my highest confidence detection tier hadn't actually worked for most of the build.

Full writeup: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/you-cant-govern-ai-your-instance-dont-know-its-alex-mcdonald-mllve
Repo, open source: github.com/BrianMcD47/AgentCensus

Curious if this matches what others are finding when they actually go looking.

[Abhishek Pal]

Hi @AlexMcDonald ,

Absolutely, and I think that "registered but not detected" state is especially valuable because it prevents the scanner from becoming a false source of truth.

A useful next step could be to calculate coverage metrics such as:

- Governed assets detected by the scanner
- Governed assets missed by the scanner
- Scanner-only discoveries
- Confirmed shadow AI
- Items still requiring review

That would let you measure both governance coverage and scanner effectiveness over time.

Really appreciate the discussion as well. This is shaping into a strong pre-inventory discovery pattern rather than just another inventory tool.

Kind Regards,
Abhishek Pal