Complete the Agent Design Package
Explore how to create a complete agent design package that integrates decisions on orchestration, reliability, containment, and failure modes. Learn to reconcile these components into a coherent system that meets review standards, supports audit and enforcement, and manages risks effectively before implementation begins.
We'll cover the following...
- Agent design package structure and reviewability
- Reconciling decisions into one coherent system
- The containment envelope as an enforceable contract
- Failure-mode analysis that a review can act on
- Handoff contract to integration and identity work
- Design-review reflection and phase gate
- Practice: Defend one reconciliation against the phase gate
- Chapter summary
Each component of the chapter’s deliverable is developed in a separate lesson: the agent-versus-workflow decision, orchestration architecture decision record (ADR), state and replay specification, reliability policy, containment envelope, and failure-mode analysis. To support a complete architecture review, reconcile these components in a single agent design package.
A review group representing platform, security, and product must be able to approve the package, approve it conditionally subject to defined experiments, or reject it based on documented evidence and residual risk. Conditional approval should identify the required experiments, owners, success criteria, and review deadline.
The package is acceptable only when it is both inspectable and enforceable. Each architectural decision must be traceable to supporting evidence, and each required control must be mapped to an owner, enforcement point, and verification method. The package must document the orchestration decisions, state-persistence and replay-support behavior, and reliability controls appropriate to the side effects of each tool. It must also define the containment envelope and its enforcement points, together with a failure-mode analysis that maps each ...