Lint a One-Page Charter Before an Agent Pilot Starts
A pilot dies in the handoff, not in the model. Teams blame latency, quotas, or reasoning quality, then repeat the same pilot next quarter. The logs usually show something duller. Three people each held a third of the context, and nobody owned the exit. This post describes a one-page charter for a time-boxed agent pilot. It names three roles, stamps every handoff, and hard-codes a stop rule. A…
A one-page charter serves as a guide for time-limited agent pilots, ensuring clear roles and responsibilities. The charter consists of three roles - a scout, scribe, and signer, each with distinct responsibilities. The scout proposes work and writes the initial prompt, the scribe records every handoff with timestamps and intent, and the signer holds the stop rule and revert path.
No feature code is written during the pilot, and the scribe speaks for the pilot in shared chat. The pilot runs for a defined window, with a specific signer, scribe, and scout assigned. The pilot's scope is limited to a single internal service with no customer data. A stop rule is set to halt the pilot upon two lost handoffs or one failed revert.
A revert command is provided to rollback the pilot branch if needed. A linting tool checks the charter for completeness and correctness, rejecting it if any required fields are missing or placeholders remain. If the charter passes linting, the pilot proceeds; otherwise, it is rejected.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
