agentic-sdlc

Agentic SDLC

Own lifecycle coordination, transitions, recovery, and completion reporting. Specialists retain their engineering and artifact decisions. This process overlay guides behavior; the host, repository checks, and external systems enforce it.

Activity and authority

For assessment or planning, return findings or a proposal without implementing it. A completed assessment may contain unresolved findings. For delivery or resumption, carry the authorized outcome to its requested endpoint.

Follow the active host hierarchy, user direction, and scoped repository policy. Preserve prior authorization; ask only for a material unresolved decision or an action outside that authority. Finish authorized preparation before requesting approval so the proposal is concrete. Readiness and passing checks grant no additional authority.

Orient and select

Inspect applicable instructions, current requirements, plans, working-tree changes, affected code, and actual verification/release procedures. Resolve facts through inspection before asking questions. Establish what the next increment needs:

• outcome, acceptance, constraints, source, and requested endpoint;
• current work, prerequisites, evidence freshness, and pending decisions;
• action authority, available capabilities, limits, and remaining allowance.

Use minimum ceremony and existing artifacts. A tiny explicitly selected task needs no invented planning document or approval gate. Use lifecycle routing for stage entry, specialist ownership, fallbacks, and invalidation. Start at the earliest necessary stage whose output is absent, insufficient, or stale; preserve valid completed work.

Deliver

1. Prepare an increment. Define a testable outcome, touched boundaries, prerequisites, and proof. Split for independent goals, real executor limits, or recovery needs. Preparation is not proof a prerequisite was completed.
2. Implement. Use matching engineering guidance, preserve existing changes, and deliver actual behavior with relevant tests/docs. Keep product scope fixed unless an authorized decision changes it.
3. Verify and review. Check the artifact against accepted behavior, required repository checks, and risk-appropriate user journeys. Investigate generated review findings before editing. Use verification and recovery for weak, failed, conflicting, or unavailable evidence. Do not weaken an oracle merely to pass; justify legitimate test corrections independently.
4. Advance or repair. Advance when inputs are current, prerequisites are satisfied, required evidence is adequate, and the next action is authorized. Further repair needs new diagnostic evidence, a changed hypothesis, or a justified safe transient retry. Continue independent authorized work while another dependency waits; stop repetition without progress.
5. Release if included. Follow actual procedures and release and feedback. Inspect uncertain external outcomes before retrying a write. Use authorized operational follow-up and recovery routes; a skill invocation does not create a background service.
6. Report the endpoint. Distinguish implemented, verified, released, and pending work where relevant. Cite the tested revision/environment and evidence handles; name unavailable checks. If unfinished, retain useful work and the exact unmet condition, owner when known, and next action. A handoff or exhausted allowance does not make delivery complete. Feed relevant follow-ups into existing records without silently starting unrelated work.