Golden Paths for Agents: Why Platform Engineering is the Missing Layer
· 8 min read
Agents Do Not Remove Delivery Friction
AI agents can read a repository, write code, run tests, and open a pull request. That is an impressive capability, but it does not make the surrounding engineering system easier to navigate. It makes every inconsistency in that system easier to reproduce at speed.
An agent given access to a large, undocumented environment faces the same questions a new engineer does: Which template is approved? How is a service deployed? Where do secrets come from? Which checks are mandatory? Who owns this dependency? What is safe to change? A capable model can infer some answers, but inference is not a reliable operating model for production software.