series · 7 essays
The Agentic SDLC
Software delivery is reorganizing around agents, and most teams are meeting the shift one tool at a time. These seven essays argue the tools are the least interesting part. The durable changes are structural: who writes the spec, what counts as the product, and how work gets verified.
The essays build one argument. Improvised prompting gives way to specs, the pipeline becomes an agentic SDLC, and a daily working loop emerges inside it. From there the claim sharpens. The spec displaces code as the durable asset, workflows take over control flow, and the constraint moves to the human frame around the work. The last essay lands it all in an accounting discipline for verified outcomes.
Read them in order if the argument is new to you; each essay assumes the one before it. The order is the argument's, not the calendar's, which is why Workflow.ts comes before The Frame Is the Bottleneck. This cluster is also the spine of my book, The Bottleneck Is Never the Stack.
reading order
The essays
- 01From Vibe Mode to Spec Mode: Why I’m All In on Kiro3 min read
Where the shift starts: a hands-on account of trading improvised prompting for structured, spec-driven development.
- 02The Agentic SDLC: Uniting the AI Tool Sprawl18 min read
Names the system: draws the lanes that turn scattered AI tools into one delivery pipeline.
- 03Spec, Standards, Specialists: How I Actually Build with AI26 min read
The working loop up close: one refined spec, house standards, and a bench of specialist agents.
- 04The Spec Is the Product11 min read
The thesis beat: code becomes regeneratable output, and the spec becomes the durable asset.
- 05Workflow.ts: When the Code Runs the Agent, Not the Other Way Around19 min read
Inverts the agent loop: code owns the control flow, and the model owns the judgment inside each step.
- 06The Frame Is the Bottleneck11 min read
Zooms out: as agents get better at execution, the human frame around the work becomes the constraint.
- 07The AI Operating Ledger11 min read
Where it lands: an accounting discipline that counts verified outcomes, not generated output.
supporting reads
Around the spine
- Code Review Your Prompts
A four-question code review for prompts: rigor for the practice the series keeps leaning on.
- The Agent Team Tax: When AI Agents Need to Argue
When agent teams earn their cost, and when they are just expensive subagents.
companion repos
The code behind the essays
- context-spine-workflow-js
The Workflow.ts pattern as a runnable TypeScript reference.
- multi-agent-workflow
The spec, standards, and specialists loop packaged for real projects.
The book version of this argument
These essays are the spine of The Bottleneck Is Never the Stack, where the argument runs as one continuous piece with an operating model attached.