Airforge / principles
Principles
Principles for work that changes hands.
Six positions shape what Airforge builds, what it refuses, and how its systems are judged.
Interfaces used by agents are public contracts.
Software agents depend on output they can parse, failures they can distinguish, and behavior that remains stable across runs. An interface is not merely presentation when another system makes decisions from it.
In practice
Outputs, errors, and exit behavior are specified, versioned, and tested as deliberately as an API.
Work needs durable state outside any one context window.
Conversations end. Processes restart. People and agents change hands. Ownership and progress cannot depend on one participant remembering what happened.
In practice
Decisions, status, history, and handoff context persist independently of the actor currently doing the work.
Coordination must make races and failure explicit.
Two actors should not both believe they own the same work. A failed claim or conflicting update should be visible and actionable, not softened into ambiguous success.
In practice
Contested operations are atomic, conflicts are named, and callers receive outcomes they can branch on.
Humans need oversight, not constant mediation.
Human attention is best spent setting intent, reviewing evidence, and resolving meaningful ambiguity—not relaying every routine transition between tools.
In practice
Agents can act within clear boundaries while recording who acted, what changed, and where human judgment is required.
Local agency and complete export are product features.
A useful system should not make access to essential work contingent on one service remaining available or one vendor relationship continuing forever.
In practice
Local operation remains first-class, ownership stays legible, and users retain a complete path out with their data.
Minimalism means fewer concepts, not fewer guarantees.
A small surface is valuable only when its behavior remains exact. Removing visible complexity must not remove error handling, ownership, auditability, or trust.
In practice
Airforge removes decorative machinery while preserving the contracts complicated work depends on.