AgentOps Philosophy

AI agents are stochastic authors. Tests can establish deterministic facts, but they do not judge every semantic claim, and an author should not certify its own work. AgentOps therefore provides a small evidence protocol:

intent -> one bounded experiment -> exact subject identity
       -> fresh independent judgment -> durable verdict

The protocol is behavior-first. Plan expresses one behavior as normal and edge Given/When/Then scenarios, non-goals, write scope, and required evidence. Implement performs one bounded RED-to-GREEN-to-refactor experiment. Validate binds criterion-level judgment to a deterministic content manifest and stores the result as verdict.v2. RPI invokes those responsibilities once and stops.

This is a trust floor, not a workflow engine. AgentOps does not own retries, budgets, queues, claims, leases, Git, CI, closure, release, or delivery. A FAIL is evidence for the caller, not permission for AgentOps to repair or continue.

Learn remains an optional, off-path hypothesis: collections of verdicts may reveal repeated defect classes worth turning into guidance or deterministic checks. Promotion is deliberate and evidence-backed; it never changes the validity of the candidate that produced the observation.

The product remains portable. Its core contracts operate in a non-Git directory without the ao binary. The CLI supplies repository utilities and ordinary deterministic checks. Optional councils, genies, runtimes, trackers, and software-factory adapters can consume the protocol without becoming its authority.