Accidental Intelligence

Version 0.4.0 · 8 pages · PDF · Word

What are the Accidental Guides?

The Accidental Guides are short guides to AI coding agents and the ways teams use them to build software. Each one answers one question by explaining a few parts, one at a time.

There’s a lot written about AI coding agents, and the same word often means different things to different writers. These guides are short and use one name for each thing in every guide, so what you learn in one carries over to the next.

The guides started by accident, when one was written to settle which words to use for the parts of a coding agent. The title Accidental Intelligence plays on artificial intelligence.

People often build a machine for one job and find it does another. The models that coding agents use were trained to predict the next word, and it turned out they could write software. Guides that started by accident are in good company.

Guide	Answers	Version
Agents, Harnesses, Skills, and Tools	What are the parts of an AI coding agent, and what does each one do?	1.0.0
Specs and Reviews	How does work get from an idea to done?	0.2.0
Software Factories	What is a software factory, and what’s in one?	0.1.0
Lights-Off Software Factories	What decides if a change is right when nobody reads the code?	0.2.0
Harness Engineering	What do teams build to catch a coding agent’s mistakes?	0.1.0 draft
Running a Software Factory	What does a team decide before a factory runs, and how does it know the factory works?	0.1.0 draft
Software Factory Claims	How do you check a claim about AI-built software?	0.1.0 draft

Where do I start?

Arrows show the order to read the guides in. A dashed box is a draft. The small squares are each guide’s parts, colored by family.

Guide	Read it if you
Agents, Harnesses, Skills, and Tools	use a coding agent and want to know how it works
Specs and Reviews	are new to specs, trackers and reviews
Software Factories	hear “software factory” and want to know what it means
Running a Software Factory	lead a team that runs a factory
Harness Engineering	build checks and limits for coding agents
Lights-Off Software Factories	wonder if anyone still needs to read the code
Software Factory Claims	read announcements about AI writing code

What do the colors mean?

Each part belongs to one of six families, and each family has one color.

A part goes in the family of the job it does. A review agent runs, but its job is to judge a change, so it sits with the checks.

Key	Family	What it holds
Ru	Things that run	Programs and loops that do the work.
Wr	Things you write down	Text that people or agents read and keep.
Ck	Things that check	Whatever decides if a change is right.
Us	Things an agent uses	Tools an agent calls and places it works in.
Dm	Decisions people make	Rules a team sets before the work runs.
Nu	Numbers and claims	Counts and scores, and the claims built on them.

Inside each guide, tiles are colored by their order in that guide, so a part may have a different color there.

Where does each part live?

Each row is one guide and the parts it defines, sorted by color.

Spec and work item are parts in two guides, once for any project and once inside a factory.

Guide	Part	Key	Family
Agents, Harnesses, Skills, and Tools	Model	Mo	Ru
Agents, Harnesses, Skills, and Tools	Harness	Ha	Ru
Agents, Harnesses, Skills, and Tools	Agent	Ag	Ru
Agents, Harnesses, Skills, and Tools	Skill	Sk	Wr
Agents, Harnesses, Skills, and Tools	Tool	To	Us
Agents, Harnesses, Skills, and Tools	MCP server	Mc	Us
Specs and Reviews	Spec	Sp	Wr
Specs and Reviews	Work item	Wi	Wr
Specs and Reviews	Tracker	Tr	Wr
Specs and Reviews	Acceptance criteria	Ac	Dm
Specs and Reviews	Review	Rv	Ck
Software Factories	Spec	Sp	Wr
Software Factories	Work item	Wi	Wr
Software Factories	Orchestrator	Or	Ru
Software Factories	Agent session	As	Ru
Software Factories	Gate	Ga	Ck
Lights-Off Software Factories	Scenario	Sn	Wr
Lights-Off Software Factories	Digital twin	Dt	Us
Lights-Off Software Factories	Satisfaction	Sa	Ck
Lights-Off Software Factories	Closed loop	Cl	Ru
Harness Engineering	Check	Ch	Ck
Harness Engineering	Review agent	Ra	Ck
Harness Engineering	Eval	Ev	Ck
Harness Engineering	Outer loop	Ol	Ru
Harness Engineering	Progress file	Pf	Wr
Harness Engineering	Sandbox	Sb	Us
Running a Software Factory	Accepted output	Ao	Dm
Running a Software Factory	Boundary	Bd	Dm
Running a Software Factory	Identity	Id	Dm
Running a Software Factory	Evidence	Ed	Ck
Running a Software Factory	Back pressure	Bp	Dm
Running a Software Factory	Metric	Me	Nu
Software Factory Claims	Share of code	Sc	Nu
Software Factory Claims	Multiplier	Mu	Nu
Software Factory Claims	Benchmark	Bm	Nu
Software Factory Claims	Demo	De	Nu
Software Factory Claims	Headcount	Hc	Nu
Software Factory Claims	Dark factory	Df	Nu

Guides to start with

Agents, Harnesses, Skills, and Tools

Field	Text
Read next	Software Factories, where a program starts the agent sessions instead of you.

Specs and Reviews

Field	Text
Read next	Software Factories.

Software Factories

Field	Text
Read next	Running a Software Factory if you lead one, Harness Engineering if you build one, and Lights-Off Software Factories if you wonder whether anyone needs to read the code.

Guides to read next

Lights-Off Software Factories

Field	Text
Read next	Software Factory Claims.

Harness Engineering

Field	Text
Read next	Lights-Off Software Factories, for the checks you need before you stop reading the code.

Running a Software Factory

Field	Text
Read next	Software Factory Claims, for checking the numbers other people publish.

Software Factory Claims

Field	Text
Read next	Lights-Off Software Factories, since the boldest claims are about factories where nobody reads the code.

Versions

The version number on each guide’s cover goes up whenever the text changes. Before 1.0.0, a guide’s parts may still change.