Paper IV · revised 2026.05In progress

Agentile

The methodology that produced this work

By Saul Loveman, Larry Klosowski

Abstract

Agentile is the institutional methodology developed during the Citrate Network build: a set of operating rules for human-agent software engineering that produced a Layer-1 blockchain with one engineer plus an AI in four months. The paper extracts the methodology from the codebase that proved it: the four ratchets (test count, formal specs, CI tripwires, frontmatter coverage), the named failure modes catalog, the audit-immutability discipline, the mock-budget gate. The methodology travels — this monorepo is the second project to adopt it, with planned per-project case studies.

PDF coming soon — the LaTeX pipeline lands in a forthcoming sprint

0. Status

This paper is in active drafting. The body below is an outline; the full sections expand into the published draft when the cooperative team completes the editorial pass. The abstract above is the canonical short summary.

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1. Outline

  1. The four ratchets (tests, specs, tripwires, frontmatter)
  2. Named failure modes catalog
  3. Audit-immutability discipline (Rule 6)
  4. The mock-budget gate (Rule 11)
  5. Planning before coding (Rule 0)
  6. The honest-amendment-not-scope-cut pattern
  7. Per-project case studies (Citrate, Mozi House)