Reading / 2026-05/2026-05-19t174452-humanlayer12-factor-agents
humanlayer/12-factor-agents
Factor 5 of 12-factor-agents argues that AI apps should unify execution state and business state into a single context-window-derived thread, simplifying serialization, debugging, recovery, and observability.
May 19, 2026 · tech · GitHub
Topics
- agentic-workflows
- llm-engineering
- software-architecture
- context-engineering
- ai-agents
Cited by
- Agentic workflows
Systems where AI agents execute multi-step tasks autonomously, raising interconnected questions about harness architecture, state management, reliability engineering, human oversight, and the organizational context those agents operate within.
- AI agents
Autonomous systems that plan, act, and verify across tool calls and multi-step workflows, with active debate over architecture choices, coordination costs, memory design, state management, and the governance infrastructure needed to make them reliable.
- Context engineering
Context engineering is the practice of deliberately constructing what an LLM receives in its context window — structuring, compressing, persisting, and retrieving information so agents produce reliable output across tasks and sessions.
- LLM engineering
LLM engineering spans the full stack of building with large language models: training, inference optimization, agent architecture, harness design, and the operational tradeoffs that determine whether model capability translates into reliable software.
- Software architecture
Software architecture shapes how systems behave under pressure, how teams reason about codebases, and how much complexity accumulates over time — spanning module design, state management, deployment topology, and the feedback loops that keep all three honest.
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