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IBM Guardrails

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Claude Code Knowledge Pack7/10/2026

Overview

IBM Guardrails

LiteLLM works with IBM's FMS Guardrails for content safety. You can use it to detect jailbreaks, PII, hate speech, and more.

What it does

IBM's FMS Guardrails is a framework for invoking detectors on LLM inputs and outputs. To configure these detectors, you can use e.g. TrustyAI detectors, an open-source project maintained by the Red Hat's TrustyAI team that allows the user to configure detectors that are:

Each detector outputs an API response based on the following openapi schema.

You can run these checks:

  • Before sending to the LLM (on user input)
  • After getting LLM response (on output)
  • During the call (parallel to LLM)

Quick Start

1. Add to your config.yaml

model_list:
  - model_name: gpt-3.5-turbo
    litellm_params:
      model: openai/gpt-3.5-turbo
      api_key: os.environ/OPENAI_API_KEY

guardrails:
  - guardrail_name: ibm-jailbreak-detector
    litellm_params:
      guardrail: ibm_guardrails
      mode: pre_call
      auth_token: os.environ/IBM_GUARDRAILS_AUTH_TOKEN
      base_url: "https://your-detector-server.com"
      detector_id: "jailbreak-detector"
      is_detector_server: true
      default_on: true
      optional_params:
        score_threshold: 0.8
        block_on_detection: true

2. Set your auth token

3. Start the proxy

litellm --config config.yaml --detailed_debug

4. Make a request

curl -i http://localhost:4000/v1/chat/completions \\
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \\
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-1234" \\
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-3.5-turbo",
    "messages": [
      {"role": "user", "content": "Hello, how are you?"}
    ],
    "guardrails": ["ibm-jailbreak-detector"]
  }'

Configuration

Required params

  • guardrail - str - Set to ibm_guardrails
  • auth_token - str - Your IBM Guardrails auth token. Can use os.environ/IBM_GUARDRAILS_AUTH_TOKEN
  • base_url - str - URL of your IBM Detector or Guardrails server
  • detector_id - str - Which detector to use (e.g., "jailbreak-detector", "pii-detector")

Optional params

  • mode - str or list[str] - When to run. Options: pre_call, post_call, during_call. Default: pre_call
  • default_on - bool - Run automatically without specifying in request. Default: false
  • is_detector_server - bool - true for detector server, false for orchestrator. Default: true
  • verify_ssl - bool - Whether to verify SSL certificates. Default: true

optional_params

These go under optional_params:

  • detector_params - dict - Parameters to pass to your detector
  • extra_headers - dict - Additional headers to inject into requests to IBM Guardrails, as a key-value dict.
  • score_threshold - float - Only count detections above this score (0.0 to 1.0)
  • block_on_detection - bool - Block the request when violations found. Default: true

Server Types

IBM Guardrails has two APIs you can use:

Detector Server (recommended)

This Detectors API uses api/v1/text/contents endpoint to run a single detector; it can accept multiple text inputs within a request.

guardrails:
  - guardrail_name: ibm-detector
    litellm_params:
      guardrail: ibm_guardrails
      mode: pre_call
      auth_token: os.environ/IBM_GUARDRAILS_AUTH_TOKEN
      base_url: "https://your-detector-server.com"
      detector_id: "jailbreak-detector"
      is_detector_server: true  # Use detector server

Orchestrator

If you're using the IBM FMS Guardrails Orchestrator, you can use FMS Orchestrator API, specifically by leveraging the api/v2/text/detection/content to potentially run multiple detectors in a single request; however, this endpoint can only accept one text input per request.

guardrails:
  - guardrail_name: ibm-orchestrator
    litellm_params:
      guardrail: ibm_guardrails
      mode: pre_call
      auth_token: os.environ/IBM_GUARDRAILS_AUTH_TOKEN
      base_url: "https://your-orchestrator-server.com"
      detector_id: "jailbreak-detector"
      is_detector_server: false  # Use orchestrator

Examples

Check for jailbreaks on input

guardrails:
  - guardrail_name: jailbreak-check
    litellm_params:
      guardrail: ibm_guardrails
      mode: pre_call
      auth_token: os.environ/IBM_GUARDRAILS_AUTH_TOKEN
      base_url: "https://your-detector-server.com"
      detector_id: "jailbreak-detector"
      is_detector_server: true
      default_on: true
      optional_params:
        score_threshold: 0.8

Check for PII in responses

guardrails:
  - guardrail_name: pii-check
    litellm_params:
      guardrail: ibm_guardrails
      mode: post_call
      auth_token: os.environ/IBM_GUARDRAILS_AUTH_TOKEN
      base_url: "https://your-detector-server.com"
      detector_id: "pii-detector"
      is_detector_server: true
      optional_params:
        score_threshold: 0.5  # Lower threshold for PII
        block_on_detection: true

Run multiple detectors

guardrails:
  - guardrail_name: jailbreak-check
    litellm_params:
      guardrail: ibm_guardrails
      mode: pre_call
      auth_token: os.environ/IBM_GUARDRAILS_AUTH_TOKEN
      base_url: "https://your-detector-server.com"
      detector_id: "jailbreak-detector"
      is_detector_server: true
      
  - guardrail_name: pii-check
    litellm_params:
      guardrail: ibm_guardrails
      mode: post_call
      auth_token: os.environ/IBM_GUARDRAILS_AUTH_TOKEN
      base_url: "https://your-detector-server.com"
      detector_id: "pii-detector"
      is_detector_server: true

Then in your request:

curl -i http://localhost:4000/v1/chat/completions \\
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \\
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-1234" \\
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-3.5-turbo",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
    "guardrails": ["jailbreak-check", "pii-check"]
  }'

How detection works

When IBM Guardrails finds something, it returns details about what it found:

{
  "start": 0,
  "end": 31,
  "text": "You are now in Do Anything Mode",
  "detection_type": "jailbreak",
  "score": 0.858
}
  • score - How confident it is (0.0 to 1.0)
  • text - The specific text that triggered it
  • detection_type - What kind of violation

If the score is above your score_threshold, the request gets blocked (if block_on_detection is true).

Further Reading