AI-DLC
AI-DLC is a governed AI development lifecycle that extends software delivery practices to autonomous agents. It adds cost observability, per-action approval gates, failure drills and evidence tracking to the engineering workflow so teams can ship AI agents with the same confidence they ship traditional code.
What AI-DLC means
Traditional SDLC practices — version control, code review, testing and deployment pipelines — do not fully address what makes AI agents different: non-deterministic model outputs, tool invocations that cross system boundaries, and actions that require human judgment. AI-DLC extends the engineering lifecycle with agent-specific controls: cost observability that attributes spend to the workflow that earned it, approval gates for irreversible actions, deterministic stop conditions that halt runaway loops, and failure drills that rehearse how to recover when agents go wrong. The result is a governed path from development to production where every agent has a registered identity, scoped permissions, and a complete audit record of what it did. Teams using AI-DLC can ship agents faster because the governance boundary is built into the process, not added as an afterthought.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between AI-DLC and traditional SDLC?
Traditional SDLC governs how code is written, reviewed, tested and deployed. AI-DLC adds agent-specific concerns: model and tool governance, cost attribution per agent, approval gates for consequential actions, and replayable run records for audit. An AI-DLC pipeline includes all the traditional controls plus these agent-layer controls.
Do I need AI-DLC if I already have code review and testing?
Code review and testing catch code defects. They do not address whether an agent invoked an unapproved tool, exceeded its spend budget, or took an action that requires human judgment. AI-DLC adds the agent-layer controls that code review alone cannot provide.
Who uses AI-DLC?
Engineering teams deploying AI agents to production, especially in regulated industries where agents touch financial systems, customer data or production infrastructure. AI-DLC is the governance framework that lets VP Engineering, CISO and model risk reviewers approve agent deployments with confidence.