Build the environment first: encode each obligation as a mechanism the environment enforces, so quality is a property of the ground the agents stand on.

ConceptBig idea 2 · the stance

Governance-centric — the enabling substrate

Three process models for agentic software engineering Three panels arranged as a triangle. The two poles sit on top: velocity-centric at top-left — a human sets a goal, then a ring of role-labeled agents — planner, developer, tester, reviewer, security, deploy — passes work around a cycle, with insufficient quality control; and oversight-centric at top-right — a human and a single agent exchange a prompt and an output in a round trip, so human attention gates every step of progress. Governance-centric sits centered beneath them as the synthesis: a human hands policies into a governed engineering environment that contains the agent, so known obligations become controls before the agent works. The book takes the third stance. (a) Velocity-centric Human goal ↓ Planner Developer Tester Reviewer Security Deploy Insufficient quality control (b) Oversight-centric Human Agent: bounded work prompt output Human attention gates progress (c) Governance-centric Human Governed engineering environment Agent policies Known policies become controls

Engineering intuition

Velocity-centric hands work around a ring of job titles and leaves quality implicit; oversight-centric parks a human beside each change, and attention does not scale with the fleet. Governance pays attention per class of failure instead: once, when you build the mechanism that retires it.

Related concepts

Mechanisms

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