Files
Magnus Hedemarkandfactory-droid[bot] <138933559+factory-droid[bot]@users.noreply.github.com> a315b77bd8 feat(flatten): rewrite moved-file paths for flat layout
Re-point relative references inside the six non-tailscale/workflow-architect
bundle dirs now that they live one level shallower at the repo root:
- bundle-root SKILL.md/manifest.yaml/README.md: ../../<target> -> ../<target>,
  cross-bundle ../../bundles/<x> -> ../<x>
- forward-deployed-engineering references/: ../../../<target> -> ../../<target>
- product-lifecycle references cross-bundle ../../bundles/neckbeard -> ../../neckbeard
- product-lifecycle references/discovery-brief.md prose headings drop bundles/ prefix
- neckbeard eval shell commands bundles/neckbeard/eval -> neckbeard/eval
- production-excellence AGENTS.md depth note updated
- manifest header comments point at ../schemas/bundle-manifest-v1.schema.json
- regenerate docs/lifecycle-capability-matrix.{md,json}

Co-authored-by: factory-droid[bot] <138933559+factory-droid[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
2026-08-14 15:59:56 -04:00
..

agent-production-operations — runtime control plane for AI agents

Take an evaluated agent from "passes tests" to "safe in production" with versioning, staged rollout, fallback, cost and latency monitoring, escalation, and disablement — all feeding back into better evaluations.

Why Install This Skill

You have an AI agent that passes your evaluation suite. The evals are solid, the observability is in place, and the agent looks ready. But between "passes evals" and "safe at scale" there is an operational gap no single specialist skill fills: how do you version the model, prompt, and tools together? How do you roll out gradually instead of flipping a switch? What happens when the model regresses, a tool goes down, the cost budget blows up, or the agent tries something it shouldn't?

This bundle gives you a runtime control plane purpose-built for AI agents. It does not replace your release pipeline, your SRE practices, your security reviews, or your eval framework — it sits between them, coordinating the decisions that are specific to operating an agent with tools and authority in production. It distinguishes read-only agents from side-effect-capable agents and customer-facing agents from internal ones, because a search bot and a support bot that can modify accounts have fundamentally different operational risk profiles.

After installing this skill, your agent can answer: what authority do I have, what happens when I'm uncertain, when do I escalate to a human, how do I fall back safely, and when should I be disabled entirely. Your team can answer: how do production incidents feed back into better evaluations, and how do eval results gate the next release.

What You Get

Path What it provides
SKILL.md Umbrella entry point — runtime control plane routing table, concrete authority/escalation/fallback/disablement parameters, and specialist-skill orchestration
README.md This file — human-facing overview
AGENTS.md Agent loading and nested-skill discovery notes
references/discovery-brief.md Bounded discovery brief defining boundaries with agent-evals, release, SRE, security, and platform skills
references/agent-production-contract.md Production contract template — capability, authority, uncertainty, escalation, and side-effect contracts with production-readiness and incident-learning inputs
references/runtime-control-plan.md Versioning (model, prompt, tool, policy, evaluator), four-stage rollout plan, and fallback paths with concrete triggers
references/tool-authority-health.md Health record schema for tracking tool availability, tool failure, authority usage, authority breaches, cost, and latency over time
references/trace-to-eval-feedback.md Production-to-evaluation feedback loop — how traces and incidents become eval cases and gate releases
evals/evals.json Integrated eval cases covering read-only agents, side-effect agents, model regression, tool outages, cost breaches, and human escalation
manifest.yaml Machine-readable bundle manifest (schema v1): purpose, audience, stages, included skills, prerequisites, outputs, handoffs, conflicts, and eval suite

Quick Start

  1. Start with an agent that has passed evaluation (use agent-evals-and-observability).

  2. Define the agent's production contract using references/agent-production-contract.md. Fill in capability, authority, uncertainty, escalation, and side-effect fields.

  3. Consume the most recent production-readiness review outcome for the agent's host service from production-readiness and any open incident-learning records from incident-learning. Record both in the contract.

  4. Plan versioning, staged rollout, and fallback using references/runtime-control-plan.md.

  5. Begin Stage 1 rollout (shadow/dry-run). Record tool and authority health in references/tool-authority-health.md.

  6. Advance through stages as exit criteria are met. At each stage boundary, review the health record for authority breaches, tool degradation, cost trends, and latency patterns.

  7. When escalation or fallback triggers fire, follow the concrete procedures in SKILL.md.

  8. Feed production traces and incidents back into evaluation cases using references/trace-to-eval-feedback.md.

Triggers

Load this bundle when:

  • You are operating an agent that has passed evaluation and is being promoted to production.
  • You need to define a staged rollout with progressive authority expansion.
  • You need versioning across model, prompt, tools, policy, and evaluator.
  • You need fallback, escalation, and disablement procedures for an agent.
  • You need a production-to-evaluation feedback loop.
  • You see terms like "agent authority," "tool health," "agent cost budget," "agent latency SLO," or "agent disablement."

Do NOT load this bundle for:

  • Building an agent from scratch — use your agent framework skill.
  • Designing evaluations or observability — use agent-evals-and-observability.
  • General release engineering — use release-engineering.
  • General SRE or incident response — use site-reliability-engineering.
  • General security engineering — use secure-software-engineering.
  • Platform infrastructure — use platform-engineering.

Requirements

  • An agent that has passed evaluation (observability and eval infrastructure must exist — see agent-evals-and-observability).
  • A designated escalation channel (human operator or team).
  • A cost budget and attribution mechanism for the agent.
  • Production-readiness review process in place (see production-readiness).
  • Incident-learning process in place (see incident-learning).
  • No additional API keys, services, or runtime dependencies beyond what the agent already requires.