Comparison
Cordum vs OpenAI Moderation API
Text content classification vs agent action governance: two safety layers for different problems.
The OpenAI Moderation API classifies text against predefined content safety categories. Cordum governs what agents are allowed to do: which tools they can call, which APIs they can invoke, and under what constraints.
This page helps teams searching for cordum vs openai moderation understand the difference between text classification and action governance.
| Evaluation Area | Cordum | OpenAI Moderation API |
|---|---|---|
| What It Governs | Agent actions: tool calls, API invocations, workflow steps, and multi-agent orchestration. The Safety Kernel evaluates every action before dispatch. | Text content: classifies input or output strings against categories like hate, self-harm, violence, and sexual content. |
| Decision Model | Four-outcome decisions: ALLOW, DENY, REQUIRE_APPROVAL, or ALLOW_WITH_CONSTRAINTS. Constrained execution enables partial risk mitigation. | Binary classification per category: flagged or not flagged, with confidence scores. No approval or constraint paths. |
| Policy Scope | Custom declarative policy bundles covering business logic, compliance rules, resource limits, and organizational constraints. Version-controlled and hot-reloaded. | Fixed content safety categories defined by OpenAI. No custom business policy support. Categories cannot be extended or customized. |
| Output Safety | Post-execution output safety can ALLOW, REDACT, or QUARANTINE results. Operates on action results, not just text. | Can classify output text for content safety. Does not handle action results, tool outputs, or non-text payloads. |
| Audit and Compliance | Structured run timeline with full decision history, policy versioning, approval records, and evidence pointers. | API response with category scores. No persistent audit trail, run timeline, or compliance reporting. |
| Runtime Independence | Provider-agnostic via CAP v2 protocol. Works with any LLM provider, agent framework, or custom runtime. SDKs in Go, Python, Node.js, C++. | OpenAI-hosted API. Works with any text input but tied to OpenAI infrastructure for classification. |
Decision checklist
- Are you classifying text for harmful content, or governing what actions agents can take in production?
- Do you need custom business policies beyond predefined content safety categories?
- Is your risk surface text content, agent tool calls, or both?
- Do you need approval workflows and constrained execution for high-risk actions?
- Could both tools complement each other: OpenAI Moderation for text safety and Cordum for action governance?
Related comparisons
Go beyond text classification
See how Cordum governs the full agent execution lifecycle with policy enforcement, approval workflows, and output safety.