ADLC
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§1 The chain

Eight phases. A gate between every one.

  1. P0
    Triage
    Exit gaterouted
    At this phaseadlc ticket
    PASS0

    Triage the ticket: is this executable by an agent at all, and at what dial settings? essay ↗

  2. P1
    Interrogate
    Exit gatehuman gate
    At this phaseA person
    ATTEST

    Interrogate the spec until it is unambiguous. Human gate one. essay ↗

  3. P2
    Decompose
    Exit gatecold-start
    At this phaseadlc coldstart
    PASS0

    Decompose into cold-startable units that an agent with zero context can pick up. essay ↗

  4. P3
    Rail
    Exit gateRED gate
    At this phaseadlc rails-guard
    PASS0

    Rail the work: write and freeze the tests that define done. essay ↗

  5. P4
    Build
    Exit gategreen gate
    At this phaseadlc build-gate
    PASS0

    Build inside the rails. Supervision tooling watches for flailing and drift. essay ↗

  6. P5
    Prosecute
    Exit gatezero findings
    At this phaseadlc prosecute
    PASS0

    Prosecute the change: prove the tests are load-bearing, not hollow. essay ↗

  7. P6
    Integrate
    Exit gatehuman gate
    At this phaseA person
    ATTEST

    Review the evidence, not the diff. Human gate two. essay ↗

  8. P7
    Distill
    Exit gatefeeds the next run
    At this phaseadlc lesson-foundry
    PASS0

    Distill what the review found into permanent, deterministic defenses. essay ↗

Six gates a machine can checkTwo a person has to closeEvidence lands in .adlc/manifest.jsonlVerdicts shown are illustrative
EXHIBIT 1.1Are the frozen tests untouched?
adlc rails-guardEXIT 2 — REFUSED
$ adlc rails-guard --base main --ticket T42 --tickets .adlc/tickets.json
✗ FAIL: a frozen rail changed

The command and exit code are real; the verdict line is this record's one-line summary of the result, not a verbatim transcript.

§2 Calibration

Three dials, set per ticket

Not every ticket deserves the same autonomy. You set three dials at triage, and the gates hold you to whatever you chose.

Dial · setting · rangeIllustrative settings
Autonomy

How long the agent runs unsupervised

70%
Oversight

How much of the output humans gate

50%
Scope

How much surface one ticket may touch

35%

Read the original essay ↗Full reference in the docs

§3 Implement

Run it against your own repository

curl -fsSL https://www.agenticlifecycle.ai/install.sh | sh

macOS and Linux, Node 18+. Then adlc init in your repository. Windows is not supported. Every install channel →

ADLC began as an essay series. Read the original theory at voodootikigod.com ↗MIT · @adlc on npmPrivacy