Generation is cheap. Carrying is not.
AI made code easy to write and harder to maintain. The economics inverted; engineering practice has not.
The harness →Most AI work fails. Not because the tools are wrong — because there is no operating model around them.
It's a systems problem.
Field notes for engineering leaders building AI-native operating models.
AI made code easy to write and harder to maintain. The economics inverted; engineering practice has not.
The harness →Tools register on dashboards; the things that make AI work or fail register only in retrospect. The visible variable is the wrong one.
Vibe vs. reliable →When agents author code, the spec becomes the durable thing. What gets written is what gets versioned and re-run.
Specify · direct · validate →Agents type; engineers decide. The labor shifted; the org chart has not.
Architect-CEO →