The 21 controls every build is held to.
The building code for Agentic Engineering. The Standard: 21 controls across the 5 C's of Agentic Governance.
The Building Code
21 controls. Five risks. One Building Code.
Each control serves one of the 5 C's of Agentic Governance and names the risk of AI-built work it answers. At Diligence, the Owner sees which controls the build meets, with the evidence for each.
AI spend without a ceiling is an unmanaged liability.
Every build phase runs inside a fixed Materials Budget, with spend and forecast-to-complete on the record.
- The risk
- Agents loop on the same failure and burn compute without delivering value.
- The control
- Materials Budget: 3 of the 21 controls in The Standard.
- The outcome
- AI spend is attributed, forecast and held inside the Materials Budget. Runaway work stops before it drains the budget.
Autonomous agents without boundaries act beyond their mandate.
Site Logistics holds every agent to its approved Build Spec and the Build Boundaries set for it.
- The risk
- Agents act beyond their mandate, changing work, tools and safeguards nobody approved.
- The control
- Site Logistics: 4 of the 21 controls in The Standard.
- The outcome
- Every agent works inside human-approved Build Boundaries. Every change is signed by a named person.
Agents that build from conversation build drift into the architecture.
Structural Integrity: agents build against the approved Master Blueprint and nothing else, each Build Spec with its Inspection Checklist.
- The risk
- Agents build from conversation, invent dependencies and skip tests. The architecture drifts.
- The control
- Structural Integrity: 3 of the 21 controls in The Standard.
- The outcome
- What ships is what the Master Blueprint approved, tested against its Inspection Checklist.
AI-built code must meet the same standard as any production system.
Code Compliance: every Build Spec is held to the Building Code before it earns a Green Tag.
- The risk
- Machine-speed generation brings machine-speed vulnerabilities, leaked secrets and copyleft licence exposure.
- The control
- Code Compliance: 6 of the 21 controls in The Standard.
- The outcome
- Every Build Spec is held to the Building Code for security, licensing and provenance before it earns a Green Tag.
Automation without accountable people leaves the enterprise exposed.
Named people govern every gate: the enterprise's Build Managers review, its testers approve, its leaders sign.
- The risk
- Reviewers overwhelmed by the volume of AI-built code approve work they have not understood.
- The control
- Build Managers: 5 of the 21 controls in The Standard.
- The outcome
- Named people from the enterprise review, test and own the work. The knowledge stays with the enterprise.
Before an enterprise scales its AI compute, it must scale its governance.
Controls met is an ownership measure. What each control checks, and how, is shared in the enterprise review, with the complete gate map and House Rules.