Agent-driven systems require closed loops, clear boundaries, and intent validation

There’s been a lot of chatter recently about a coding agent #claude #sourcecode showing up publicly on GitHub and probably got cloned. Not going to speculate on whether it was accidental or intentional. That’s not really the point. What this highlights is something more fundamental.They are “probably” acting on goals. And that changes how we need to think about architecture. In a traditional system, if something goes wrong, you trace the logic and fix it. It’s mostly deterministic. In an agent-driven system, the system is interpreting intent. That interpretation can vary. That’s where things get interesting, and risky. A couple of things become very important here. First, you need a closed loop. You can’t just let an agent run and hope for the best.There has to be constant checking, feedback, and correction. The system needs to observe what it did, validate it, and adjust. Without that, small deviations can turn into big outcomes very quickly. Second, deterministic and non-deterministic layers need to work together. The reasoning part of the system can be flexible.That’s where the value comes from. But the boundaries cannot be flexible.Access control, policies, limits, what is allowed and what is not, all of that has to be very clearly defined and enforced. A lot of current implementations are strong on the reasoning side, but weak on the control side. That works in demos, not in real environments. Third, intent is not the same as execution anymore.You might ask for something in a certain way, but what the system actually does depends on how it interprets that intent. That gap is where most of the risk sits. If anything, this is a good reminder. We are no longer just building systems that do what we tell them. We are building systems that decide how to do what we tell them. And the real question is not just what the system can do. It is what it should never be allowed to do. https://lnkd.in/gGqPcD6e

To view or add a comment, sign in

Explore content categories