AI Sprawl Is the New Shadow IT: How Postman Got Ahead of Ours

Postman found that internal estimates of its AI-agent footprint varied widely, while usage data identified 866 Slack-based apps and agents, illustrating how rapidly AI experimentation can create governance, security, ownership, and cost-management challenges similar to earlier SaaS, cloud, and API sprawl. Treating production agents as software that can autonomously access systems, consume model resources, handle sensitive data, and make decisions, the company created Astropods as a centralized platform providing inventory, behavioral telemetry, ownership, and cost attribution. After contacting owners and reviewing usage, Postman retired 592 low- or no-use apps, retained some exceptions, and migrated the remaining useful agents to Astro, where new agents must be created under an IT-enforced process. The account argues that one-time cleanups are insufficient because new tools quickly become invisible again, and recommends governance at creation, supported by system-derived inventories, clear accountable owners, monitoring of usage and spend, escalation paths for unresolved cases, and controls aligned with emerging frameworks such as the EU AI Act and NIST AI Risk Management Framework.

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