Engineering AI Agents & Agentic Systems

A simple, practical, no-nonsense guide to taking agents into production.
Large language models became an engineering substrate faster than the field agreed on how to build with them safely. This guide is the missing vocabulary: the durable principles and patterns for agentic software, whatever model, framework or cloud you use.
It is written for the part nobody blogs about. Not how to get an agent working in a demo, but how to put one in front of real users, with real write access, and still sleep.

What's inside
24 first principles, grouped into four families, each with an explicit violation test so you can tell whether you're actually following it
An 8-gate fail-closed tool chain — the ordered checks a write must pass before it touches a production system
42 named patterns across architecture, tool governance, data integrity, retrieval and delivery
5 contract shapes given as fields and types, not code: PolicyDecision, evidence record, governed span, run-trace envelope, capability record
An 8-scenario mandatory test matrix, including indirect injection and memory poisoning
A 53-point production-readiness checklist, marked gate / advisory / blocker
Nine diagrams, each with a legend and a declared level of abstraction
Glossary, standards-version appendix, and diagram conventions

What it covers that most material doesn't
Agent identity as a third principal, distinct from user and service account. Scope-attenuating delegation. Memory as untrusted state. Context as a finite budget rather than a container. Sandboxed code execution. Measuring reliability with pass^k instead of a single green run. Every control mapped to the OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications, plus the EU AI Act timeline as amended in July 2026.

Who it's for
Software engineers, architects and technology leaders who are past the prototype and now have to answer for what the thing does in production.

What you get
PDF (61 pages, designed for reading and printing) and EPUB (reflowable, accessible, for Kindle and e-readers). DRM-free.