Back Matter
Index
A term index over the chapters and the appendix. A curated concept entry leads with the paragraph that defines it and the paragraphs that exemplify it; a plain term entry links the pages where it appears, capped so the index leads with the significant sites.
#
- "Done" is a claimdefinition of: Ch. 26
A
- A chunkdefinition of: Ch. 2
- A property test models the outputdefinition of: Ch. 20
- A remediation jobdefinition of: Ch. 2
- A remediation servicedefinition of: Ch. 2
- A workerdefinition of: Ch. 2
- Action boundarydefinition of: Ch. 13
- ADA / document accessibility Ch. 30, Glossary, Preface, Ch. 2
- Adapter Ch. 19
- Agentdefinition of: Ch. 13
- Agent-orchestration modeldefinition of: Ch. 21
- agentic harness Ch. 3, Glossary
- Agreement is not correctnessdefinition of: Ch. 14
- Artifact/runtime boundarydefinition of: Ch. 13
- Audit Ch. 19, List of Figures and Tables, Ch. 11, Ch. 13
- Audits into lintsdefinition of: Ch. 18
B
- Blast radius Ch. 13, Ch. 19, Appendix A - 6, Appendix B - 10
- Bottom-up inductiondefinition of: Ch. 19
- bounded model checking Ch. 15
- Brownfield migrationdefinition of: Ch. 19
- Bun (runtime port example) Ch. 20, Ch. 31, What This Book Argues, Preface
C
- Characterization / golden test Appendix G
- Churndefinition of: Preface
- Claude Code, OpenCode Glossary
- Code coverage Ch. 20
- Codemod Ch. 19
- Commodity intelligencedefinition of: Glossary
- Compare-and-swap (CAS) Appendix C - 2, Appendix C - 7
- Compoundingdefinition of: Glossary
- Compounding failure probabilitydefinition of: Ch. 18
- Constraint Ch. 15, Ch. 26, What This Book Argues, Glossary
- Constraint (prevents drift)definition of: Ch. 15
- Constraints and sensorsdefinition of: Ch. 15
- context window / compaction Glossary, Ch. 3, Ch. 13, Ch. 14
- Control-substrate dependencydefinition of: Ch. 19
D
- Definition of Done (DoD) Ch. 14, Ch. 25
- Degrees of freedomdefinition of: Glossary
- deployment topology Ch. 5, Ch. 12, Ch. 19, Appendix C - 3
- Derivation directiondefinition of: Ch. 12
- Derive and joindefinition of: Ch. 12
- Deterministic firingdefinition of: Ch. 21
- Deterministic vs. judgment splitdefinition of: Ch. 21
- Dispatch Preface, Ch. 3, Ch. 14, Ch. 21
- Diátaxis Appendix E - 2
- Drift Appendix H, Glossary, List of Figures and Tables, Ch. 6
E
- engineered environment Glossary, Ch. 1, Ch. 3, Ch. 5
- Engineering capitaldefinition of: Ch. 16
- Epic Ch. 14, Appendix B - 5, Appendix E - 2, Appendix F - 9
- Epoch / fencing Ch. 5, Ch. 8, Ch. 15, Ch. 20
- Ex-ante governancedefinition of: Ch. 16
- Ex-post governancedefinition of: Ch. 16
- executable source-of-truth Appendix A - 1
F
- Failure mode and effects analysisdefinition of: Ch. 21
- Fault / failure injection Ch. 1, Ch. 17, Ch. 19, Ch. 22
- Feature flag / toggle Ch. 19
- Fixture Ch. 18, Ch. 19
- Flake Ch. 21
- flock / semaphore Appendix A - 5, Appendix C - 2
- foundation model Ch. 3, Glossary, Ch. 1, Ch. 5
- foundation model / model tier Ch. 3, Glossary, Ch. 1, Ch. 5
- Fuzzing Ch. 19, Ch. 20
G
- Gate Ch. 15, Ch. 26, What This Book Argues, How to Read This Book
- Gating Ch. 3, Ch. 6, Ch. 10, Ch. 14
- Generative validationdefinition of: Ch. 20
- Governance as design patternsdefinition of: The Part That Stays Yours
- Governance conversiondefinition of: Ch. 16examples of: Ch. 18
- Governance mechanismdefinition of: Ch. 15
- Governance packagedefinition of: Ch. 15
- Governance target — agentdefinition of: Appendix E - 2
- Governance target — models-bridgedefinition of: Appendix E - 2
- Governance target — productdefinition of: Appendix E - 2
- Greenfielddefinition of: Ch. 19
H
- Heartbeat Appendix A - 4
- hook (hard mechanism) Glossary, Ch. 1, Ch. 3, Ch. 13
I
- Independent obligationdefinition of: Ch. 14
- Intervention boundarydefinition of: Ch. 13
- Invariantdefinition of: Ch. 12
- invariant / policy over a model List of Figures and Tables, Ch. 5, Ch. 7, Ch. 12
J
K
- kaizen (continuous improvement) Ch. 18
L
- lexicon Appendix E - 2
- Lifecycledefinition of: Ch. 21
- Lifecycle-event bindingdefinition of: Ch. 21
- Lint Preface, List of Figures and Tables, Ch. 13, Ch. 15
- Lint, cover, inducedefinition of: Ch. 19
- lint-cover-induce Ch. 19
- liveness property Ch. 21
- Long-horizon taskdefinition of: Ch. 3
- loop engineering Ch. 15
M
- Map and territorydefinition of: Ch. 12
- Marker interface / attribute Part 2, Ch. 6, Ch. 7, Ch. 8
- Measure one level deeperdefinition of: Ch. 21
- Measure one level deeper (Ousterhout) Ch. 20, Ch. 21
- Mirror vs. specdefinition of: Ch. 14
- Modeldefinition of: Ch. 5
- model (as map / cheaper approximation) Preface, Ch. 3, Ch. 5, Ch. 11
- Model classesdefinition of: Glossary
- Model driftdefinition of: Ch. 6examples of: Ch. 14
- Model-from-codedefinition of: Ch. 12
- Model-to-codedefinition of: Ch. 12
- Modeling substratedefinition of: Ch. 12
- Models are the universal languagedefinition of: Ch. 32
O
- Observabilitydefinition of: Ch. 15examples of: Ch. 15
- One-shot scriptingdefinition of: Ch. 18
- Operational playbookdefinition of: Ch. 21
- Optionality is poisondefinition of: Ch. 26
- Oracledefinition of: Ch. 20
- orthogonal (complementary) models Appendix E - 2, Appendix E - 1
P
Q
- Qualitydefinition of: Ch. 19
- Quality-case traceabilitydefinition of: Ch. 19
- Queues and infrastructuredefinition of: Ch. 2
R
- Reasoning horizondefinition of: Ch. 3
- Reasoning inputdefinition of: Ch. 13
- Resource mediationdefinition of: Ch. 21
- Rollback Ch. 21, Appendix D - 1, Appendix D - 2, Appendix D - 3
- Root-cause analysis (RCA) Appendix F - 4, Appendix F - 5
- rubric Ch. 20, Ch. 21
- Runbookdefinition of: Ch. 21
- runbook / playbook Ch. 13, Ch. 15, Ch. 16, Ch. 18
S
- Self-communicatedefinition of: Ch. 22
- self-communicate (skill) Ch. 22, Appendix E - 2, Appendix E
- Self-governancedefinition of: Ch. 22
- self-governance (skill) Ch. 22, Appendix E - 2, The Portable Moves, Ch. 33
- Self-operatedefinition of: Ch. 22
- self-operate (skill) Ch. 22, Appendix E - 2, Appendix E
- Semantic gap Ch. 14, Glossary, List of Figures and Tables
- Sensor What This Book Argues, Glossary, Preface, List of Figures and Tables
- sensor (detects drift) What This Book Argues, Glossary, Preface, List of Figures and Tables
- Sensor (observes drift, produces evidence)definition of: Ch. 15
- Sizing the leapdefinition of: Ch. 18
- skill (soft mechanism) Ch. 22, Glossary, Preface, List of Figures and Tables
- SLO / SLI List of Figures and Tables, Ch. 1, Ch. 2, Ch. 5
- smell (code smell) Ch. 16, Ch. 19, Ch. 26
- Soft vs. hard governancedefinition of: Ch. 18
- Specification-driven developmentdefinition of: Ch. 16
- Staged deploy Appendix B - 5
- Standing contextdefinition of: Ch. 22
- Structureddefinition of: Ch. 5
- success metric / rubric Ch. 20, Ch. 21
- Supervised autonomydefinition of: Ch. 18
- synchronization model Appendix B - 1
- SysML (Systems Modeling Language) Ch. 31, Appendix G
T
- Tests for agent failure modesdefinition of: Ch. 26
- The Alignment Principledefinition of: Ch. 13
- The capability ladderdefinition of: Ch. 5
- The drift caveatdefinition of: Ch. 14
- The earliest legible boundarydefinition of: Ch. 14
- The engineer's seatdefinition of: Ch. 31
- The engineered agent loopdefinition of: Ch. 13
- The engineering substratedefinition of: Ch. 3
- The evidence recorddefinition of: Ch. 2
- The fidelity validatordefinition of: Ch. 2
- The fleetdefinition of: Preface
- The gatedefinition of: Ch. 15
- The governance cataloguedefinition of: Ch. 22
- The governed environmentdefinition of: Ch. 16
- The Modeling Principledefinition of: Ch. 5
- The printer metaphordefinition of: Ch. 1
- The provenance layerdefinition of: Ch. 2
- The residual (goals no mechanism reaches; stays-human)definition of: Ch. 16
- The semantic gapdefinition of: Ch. 14
- The support ratiodefinition of: Ch. 24
- The system knowledge graphdefinition of: Ch. 5
- The teetering towerdefinition of: Ch. 22
- The validatordefinition of: Ch. 15
- TLA / model checking Ch. 15, Ch. 20, Ch. 22, Ch. 25
- Tolerancedefinition of: Glossary
- tool (deterministic action) What This Book Argues, Glossary, Preface, List of Figures and Tables
- Top-down refinementdefinition of: Ch. 19
- Toyota Production System (lean production) Ch. 18
- Traceabilitydefinition of: Ch. 12
- traceability (quality case) Glossary, Ch. 5, Ch. 12, Ch. 16
- Transformationdefinition of: Ch. 18
- transformation (input→output) Preface, List of Figures and Tables, Ch. 12, Ch. 18
- Typed seam Ch. 19, Ch. 26
U
- user journey Ch. 5, Ch. 31, Appendix C - 6
V
- Validator Ch. 15, What This Book Argues, Glossary, Preface
- Velocity exposes the dangerdefinition of: Ch. 26
W
© James C. Davis, 2026–present