Automation and Guardrails

The more a workflow matters, the less it should depend on the agent remembering a sentence from a prompt.

The Reliability Stack

1. Instructions

Tell the agent what should happen in your context file.

2. Commands

Provide one canonical command such as pnpm verify or make check.

3. Hooks Or Wrappers

Automatically trigger formatting, validation, or reporting at the right time.

4. CI

Fail the build if required checks were skipped or output is invalid.

Examples

• Run formatting after edits through a wrapper command.
• Enforce lint, typecheck, and test in one CI gate.
• Trigger screenshot capture after UI changes.
• Require changelog or docs updates when public behavior changes.

Practical Rule

Prompts improve consistency. Guardrails create consistency.