MoorAI vs Holistic AI
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Holistic AI is an AI governance platform that has added runtime enforcement and a device agent. MoorAI is a control that sits inside the coding agent. Holistic’s platform promises to “Continuously discover and inventory every model, agent, API, and pipeline across cloud, code, and vendors - including shadow AI.” (holisticai.com/ai-governance-platform) Its runtime layer is described as “A new class of agents that sit inline with whatever AI SDK your team is actually using - Claude Code, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google ADK, Vercel, LangGraph, AutoGen, or anything custom - and enforce rules in real time, while the agent is running.” (holisticai.com blog, Runtime Agentic Enforcement) MoorAI is a PreToolUse hook inside the coding agent and an MCP stdio proxy in front of the tool servers. It reads the prompt, the file read into context, the shell command and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) arguments and results, and coaches, masks or blocks on what it finds.
Holistic reaches a coding agent in two ways, and neither is the agent’s hook. The first is the HAI Guardian SDK: “Generate an API key from the Monitoring tab, integrate into your agent or AI application, and all interactions route through the pipeline inline.” (holisticai.com blog, Runtime Agentic Enforcement) The second is Endlayer, a device agent: “One agent on the device. No proxy, no gateway, no connector per tool.” It inventories from disk, and its Decoder tier reads AI traffic on the machine: “Decoder terminates TLS on the device, so a prompt is readable at the moment it is sent, and re-encrypts it before it goes anywhere.” (holisticai.com/endlayer) MoorAI decides against a 77-threat matrix inside the agent’s own tool calls and by default sends only category · risk · keyed one-way hash.
Holistic covers far more governance ground than MoorAI does. An AI inventory across cloud, code and SaaS through read-only connectors, testing and red teaming of models and agents, compliance workflows for “EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001 & NYC LL144” (holisticai.com/ai-governance-platform), token cost attribution, and fleet posture graded against a versioned policy. MoorAI does none of that as a system of record. The rows where Holistic covers more ground are further down.
Three things this page does not state. (1) How the Guardian SDK attaches to Claude Code. Holistic says the SDK works with Claude Code and gives no mechanism, so hook-level rows are marked unconfirmed. (2) Where SDK traffic is scored. Interactions “route through the pipeline inline”; whether that pipeline runs on the device or in Holistic’s service is not stated. Endlayer’s page, by contrast, says “Nothing decrypted ever leaves the device.” (3) Pricing. We found no public price list; holisticai.com/pricing returns a not-found page and the pages lead to a demo. Every Holistic statement below is quoted from Holistic’s own site or GitHub, and the page is named.
The core difference is where each one stands: beside every AI system as its governance record, or inside one kind of agent at the moment it acts.
Where MoorAI holds ground Holistic AI does not
These rows follow from running inside the coding agent’s own tool calls and reading what each one carries. Most Holistic marks here are unconfirmed, because its pages describe the controls and not the coding-agent mechanics.
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| MoorAI | Holistic AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Enforces in the coding agent’s own pre-tool hook (Claude Code, Codex CLI, Copilot CLI, Gemini CLI, Cursor) | ✓validated end to end on Claude Code; the other four not yet against the live agents | —SDK "works with Claude Code"; mechanism not stated |
| Scans the content of a file the agent reads, not only its path | ✓file stage plus credential-path check | —Access Control restricts paths and environment variables |
| Scans what comes back into the agent from shell commands, MCP results, fetched pages and sub-agents | ✓PostToolUse, 64 KB window, Claude Code | — |
| MCP hardening: rug-pull knock-back, invisible-Unicode payloads, tool descriptions that ask for a credential file | ✓ | —Guardian tier inspects MCP calls; checks not listed |
| Flags a risky action aimed at something the user’s request never named | ✓intent alignment; lexical, keyed hashes | — |
| Stops a typosquatted or hallucinated package name at install | ✓slopsquatting gate, name only, offline | — |
| Reports the agent’s rules files (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md) leaving the device | ✓keyed shingle fingerprints, no text stored | — |
| The enforcement point is open source, so the data claim can be checked in code | ✓agent MIT | ◐surface, an inventory-only scanner, is Apache-2.0; no licence found for Endlayer or the SDK |
| Free to start and to enforce, without talking to sales | ✓agent free; console free to 200 users | ✗no public pricing; demo-led |
Where Holistic AI covers ground MoorAI does not
This list is longer. Holistic is a governance system of record for every AI system an organisation runs, with testing, compliance, cost and device posture. MoorAI governs what coding agents do on endpoints and in server mode.
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| MoorAI | Holistic AI | |
|---|---|---|
| AI inventory across cloud, code and SaaS through read-only connectors, with owners and lifecycle | ✗device-level AI bill of materials only | ✓ |
| Compliance workflows with sign-offs, mapped to EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001 and NYC LL144 | ◐moorai-compliance evidence packs; no GRC workflow | ✓ |
| Testing and red teaming of models and agents for bias, hallucination and robustness | ✗moorai-redteam tests MoorAI’s own policy, not models | ✓ |
| Token cost attributed by tool, model, project and person, with automatic cut-off of an abnormal session | ✗ | ✓ |
| Fleet grading against an immutable policy version, with unmeasured controls never counted as a pass | ◐moorai-doctor checks one device at a time | ✓Endlayer, re-graded within fifteen minutes |
| Reads desktop AI apps’ traffic on the device, so a request outside any hook can be blocked | ◐browser extension for 8 GenAI web apps; no tap for native apps | ✓Decoder, on-device TLS termination |
| Runtime guardrails for any agent SDK: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google ADK, Vercel, LangGraph, AutoGen | ◐Claude Code and Agent SDK services through the same shell hook | ✓HAI Guardian SDK |
| Agentless discovery: no install to inventory AI across the cloud estate | ✗endpoint agent required | ✓ |
Same capability, different mechanism
Both products do each of these, so the table describes how rather than scoring.
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| MoorAI does it by… | Holistic AI does it by… | |
|---|---|---|
| Stopping a coding agent’s action before it runs | A PreToolUse hook in the agent’s own process, validated end to end on Claude Code. Codex CLI, Copilot CLI, Gemini CLI and Cursor block through their own pre-tool hooks and are not yet validated against the live agents. An MCP stdio proxy enforces for any host that launches a stdio MCP server. | The HAI Guardian SDK, integrated into the agent or application: “Every action is evaluated before it runs.” It “Works with Claude Code, OpenAI SDK, Anthropic SDK, Vercel AI SDK, Google ADK, and anything you’ve built in-house.” (holisticai.com blog, Runtime Agentic Enforcement) |
| Inventory of AI on a device | An on-device AI bill of materials: models, MCP servers, editor extensions, running local model servers and AI keys at rest, checked against your allow-list, with content-free findings. | Endlayer’s Sensor tier, which reads 21 signals every fifteen minutes. “Everything is read from files already on the disk.” Of the AI tools it finds, “Seventeen are recognised by name.” (holisticai.com/endlayer) Its open-source counterpart, surface, has “No account, no daemon, no telemetry.” (github.com/holistic-ai/surface) |
| Governing an agent that runs on a server or in CI | Server mode: the same hook for claude -p in CI, containers and Agent SDK services, enforcing with no one to answer an “ask”. One live claude -p run is proven; an Agent SDK service and a GitHub Actions run have not been watched end to end. |
The Guardian SDK inline in the application, across “Claude Code, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google ADK, Vercel, LangGraph, AutoGen, or anything custom”. (holisticai.com blog, Runtime Agentic Enforcement) |
| Evidence of a decision | A signed, content-free decision receipt per verdict (tool, category, risk, decision and one-way hashes, signed with ed25519) and a hash-chained on-device log. | An incident record per blocked action, and on devices a verdict kept beside the policy version that produced it: “A control that was never measured is reported as unevaluated, never as a pass.” (holisticai.com/endlayer) |
MITRE ATLAS, as documented. In our reading of vendor material against the 76 ATLAS techniques tagged Agentic AI, Holistic AI’s published material documents 12 of the 76 (read 1 October 2026), 6 of them with a limit the vendor states. Most of the agent-runtime cells come from one product announcement, whose controls need the Guardian SDK in the agent’s path, and from the Endlayer page. That counts what the documentation says, not a test of the product. The method and every quote behind the number are in What vendors actually document against MITRE ATLAS.
Where MoorAI is stronger. What is inside the coding agent’s action. The file read, the shell command, the MCP argument and result, the prompt and the output are read inside the agent’s own hooks and coached, masked or blocked there, with checks Holistic does not describe: MCP rug pulls and hidden payloads, intent alignment, typosquatted packages and rules-file leaks. The console receives no content, the code that guarantees that is MIT, and it is free to enforce up to 200 users.
Where Holistic AI is stronger. Governance of every AI system, not one kind of agent. An inventory across cloud, code and SaaS with no install, owners and lifecycle for each system, testing and red teaming of models and agents, compliance workflows mapped to the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001 and NYC LL144, token cost attributed down to the person with runaway sessions cut automatically, and a device agent that grades a fleet against a versioned policy, never counting an unmeasured control as a pass, and reads desktop AI traffic on the machine. If the job is AI governance for an organisation, Holistic is the larger product and MoorAI is not one.
Which to run where. Run Holistic where the question is governance: which AI systems exist, who owns them, how they test, what they cost and what an assessor needs to see. Run MoorAI on developer machines and in CI where the question is what a coding agent is about to read, run or send, and where the record should hold no prompt content; its content-free findings can feed a governance record rather than replace one. Nothing in either’s public material says they conflict on one machine, and we have not run them together.
Questions about MoorAI and Holistic AI
How does Holistic AI reach Claude Code?
Through the HAI Guardian SDK, which Holistic says works with Claude Code and which is integrated into the agent or application so that interactions route through its pipeline inline, and through Endlayer, a device agent that reads files already on the disk and can terminate TLS on the device. Holistic does not describe a Claude Code hook. MoorAI installs a PreToolUse hook in Claude Code and pre-tool hooks in Codex CLI, Copilot CLI, Gemini CLI and Cursor.
Does Holistic AI send prompt content off the device?
For Endlayer, Holistic says nothing decrypted ever leaves the device, and that it reads conversations only for personal data leaking into a prompt and for tools used in ways nobody authorised. For the Guardian SDK, where interactions are scored is not stated. MoorAI sends a category, a risk level and a keyed one-way hash by default, and keeps content only if an administrator enables a capture tier.
Does MoorAI replace Holistic AI, or the other way round?
No. Holistic is an AI governance platform: inventory, testing, compliance workflows, cost attribution and device posture across an organisation’s AI. MoorAI does none of that as a system of record. MoorAI inspects what a coding agent’s actions contain and coaches, masks or blocks on the device.
Would MoorAI flag Endlayer’s on-device TLS inspection?
Possibly. MoorAI reports an agent started with a proxy setting plus an added CA certificate, because that lets traffic be read in transit. It reports by default, and denies only a proxy missing from an allow-list an administrator has set. Whether Endlayer’s Decoder works through those settings is not in Holistic’s public material, and we have not run the two together.
Does Holistic AI publish pricing?
We found no public price list; holisticai.com/pricing returns a not-found page and Holistic’s pages lead to a demo. Its open-source surface scanner is free under Apache-2.0. The MoorAI agent is free and MIT; the MoorAI console is free up to 200 users.
Holistic AI capabilities are taken from Holistic’s own published material, checked on 1 October 2026: AI Governance Platform, Shadow AI Detection, Endlayer, Guardian Agents, Runtime Agentic Enforcement and github.com/holistic-ai/surface. Every quoted phrase is Holistic’s. Analyst mentions on Holistic’s pages are not used. ◐ = partial: present but narrower than the other column. — = unconfirmed, not necessarily absent. MoorAI marks reflect shipped capability: hook enforcement is validated end to end on Claude Code; Codex, Copilot CLI, Gemini CLI and Cursor block through their own pre-tool hooks and are not yet validated against the live agents. The agent is MIT and runs on macOS, Windows and Linux; the console is source-available under the Elastic License 2.0 and free up to 200 users. Holistic AI is a trademark of its owner; this page is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Holistic AI. Both products change, so check specifics against current documentation.