ADLC Constitution
Version: 1.3.0 | Ratified: 2025-11-11 | Last Amended: 2025-12-04
For CISOs: Seven non-negotiable AI governance principles — 58 checkpoints that bind every agent action to audit trails and human approval gates. Materially reduces compliance incident risk through structural enforcement, not manual review.
The Agent Development Lifecycle (ADLC) Constitution defines the non-negotiable principles and governance framework for enterprise AI agent development. It ensures that AI agents operate within safe, auditable, and compliant boundaries throughout their lifecycle.
7 Constitutional Principles
| # | Principle | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| I | Acceptable Agency | Human oversight, scope boundaries, traceability |
| II | Interoperability & Security | MCP standard, authentication, access control |
| III | Evaluation-First | KPIs, comprehensive testing, behavior quality |
| IV | Hybrid Deployment | Multi-environment, progressive rollout, sandboxing |
| V | Observability & Resilience | MELT telemetry, SLOs, drift detection |
| VI | Governance & Compliance | Catalogs, certification, regulatory compliance |
| VII | Agent Engineering Excellence | Orchestrator pattern, meta-agent governance |
Enterprise Coordination
The ADLC framework enforces a mandatory coordination protocol ensuring business validation, technical design, and specialist execution follow a structured sequence with evidence collection at each step.
For engineers: Coordination flow diagram
ADLC Workflow Phases
The six-phase lifecycle provides structured progression from planning through operations, with human approval gates at critical transitions. Each phase has clear HITL decision gates.
For engineers: Phase flow diagram and details
| Phase | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Plan | Requirements analysis, architecture decisions |
| Build | Implementation with automated validation |
| Test/Release | Comprehensive quality assurance |
| Deploy | Progressive rollout with safety controls |
| Monitor | Continuous observability and drift detection |
| Operate | Runbooks, incident response, optimization |
Governance Coverage
The constitution provides 58 checkpoints across all principles, ensuring comprehensive validation from pre-execution through operational excellence. See Checkpoints Reference for the summary.
For compliance teams: Full checkpoint reference
Amendment Procedure
- Constitution supersedes all other development practices
- Amendments require documented rationale, stakeholder approval, migration plan
- Version increments follow semantic versioning (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH)
Detailed coordination protocols, quality gate thresholds, evidence requirements, and enforcement mechanisms are available to enterprise consumers. Contact us for access.
Reference
- Source:
.claude/memory/constitution.md - Checkpoints Reference
- Constitutional Principles