Agentic Continuous Delivery

Guidance for minimizing risk of agentic drift or code quality issues when utilizing Agentic Assisted Coding combined with Continuous Delivery Practice.

With the advent of coding agents, large portions of source code can be generated by AI in a short period of time. However, unless additional artifacts are introduced, agentic drift code quality issues and technical debt will accumulate quickly. By the time this becomes visible, it’s often unmanageable and irreversible. The introduction of additional first-class artifacts (“documentation artifacts”) can address this challenge. These artifacts need to become part of the repository itself. Continously maintaining and delivering these additional artifacts becomes the key control variable in sustained use of agentic coding.

Agentic Extensions to MinimumCD

Agentic Continuous Delivery (ACD) is the application of Continuous Delivery in environments where software changes are proposed by agents. ACD exists to reliably constrain agent autonomy without slowing delivery.

It extends MinimumCD by the following constraints:

Explicit, human-owned intent exists for every change
Intent and architecture are represented as first-class artifacts
All first-class artifacts are versioned and delivered together with the change
Intended behavior is represented independently of implementation
Consistency between intent, tests, implementation, and architecture is enforced
Agent-generated changes must comply with all documented constraints
Agents implementing changes must not be able to promote those changes to production
While the pipeline is red, agents may only generate changes restoring pipeline health

These constraints are not mandatory practices. They describe the minimum conditions required to sustain delivery pace once agents are making changes to the system.

First-Class Artifacts

In ACD, every first-class artifact:

Is required to exist
Has a clearly defined authority
Must always be consistent with other first-class artifacts
Cannot be silently bypassed by agents or humans

It is part of the delivery contract, not a convenience.

Agents may read any or all artifacts.
Agents may generate some artifacts.
Agents may not redefine the authority of any artifact.
Humans own the accountability for the artifacts.

Artifact Overview

Artifact	Role (Why it exists)	Authority	What it Constrains	Purpose in ACD	Example
Intent Description (Demand / Requirement)	Defines why the change exists	Human-owned intent	Scope, direction, outcome acceptability	Trust anchor for all other artifacts	“User activity data export required for compliance.”
User-Facing Behavior (Feature User Guide)	Defines what users experience	Externally observable semantics	Tests, behavior, backward compatibility	Prevent unexplained behavioral drift	“Export available under Profile: Activity Export.”
Feature Description (Implementation Manual)	Preserves implementation trade-offs	Engineering constraints	Technical decision boundaries, agent freedom	Prevent agentic trade-off drift	“Timestamped PDF retained for non-repudiability.”
Executable Truth (Test Scenarios)	Makes intent falsifiable	Pipeline-enforced correctness	Code, refactoring, optimization	Enforce consistency	“Tests validating report completeness.”
Implementation (Code)	Implements behavior	Runtime mechanics only	Fully constrained by other artifacts	Deliver the solution	Backend + frontend export logic
System Constraints (Architecture Overview)	Defines global invariants	System-level rules	All features, implementations, agent proposals	Maintain global integrity	“Always use MVC. No business logic in APIs.”

Why These Artifacts Must Be Separate

They are intentionally overlapping in content but non-overlapping in authority. The content overlap is necessary to control drift.

This prevents a critical agentic failure mode:

Resolving inconsistency by rewriting the wrong thing.

Why This Is Not Documentation Overhead

ACD treats semantic artifacts as first-class to preserve consistent meaning over time.

In ACD:

Artifacts are inputs to enforcement
Not outputs for humans to read

They exist so that:

tools can reference them
agents can be constrained by them
humans can steer exceptions and conflicts

Removing even a single first-class artifact reduces the reliability of ACD reference frame.

Closing remarks

None of these artifacts are required exclusively when working with coding agents: They should exist for any long-term development project. However, creating and maintaining them as part of the delivery process becomes crucial to minimize the risk of agent-induced failure.