Engineering Standards for Agentic Software Development
The 15 engineering standards
What “done” means on this team
Building the engineering mindset
Appendix A: Agentic Coding Merge Gate
Contents
Because agentic coding multiplies output, engineering judgment must scale with it.
In this context, agent-generated code must be specified carefully, verified empirically, refactored before review, reviewed for architectural fit, and owned fully by the engineer who submits it. That’s what these standards require.
Agents read files. They don’t see systems. Engineering is the human discipline that bridges that gap, determining whether agent output becomes maintainable, secure, architecturally coherent, and production-ready. AI coding agents accelerate technical debt, cognitive debt, and architectural drift faster than teams can detect or correct when engineering discipline fails to scale with the rate of code production. These standards define the engineering discipline required to prevent that outcome.
These are the minimum engineering standards for production code on this team.