Data Bricklaying Diary

Sep 16, 2026 · R&D Management

AI Agents Can Prepare Releases But Must Not Cross Production Gates

This article argues that while AI agents can accelerate code review, release preparation, and controlled deployment steps, they must never autonomously obtain production authorization or accept production risk; instead, different environments require tiered autonomy, production permissions must be short-lived, minimal, and auditable, pre-approved runbooks need strict scope and abort conditions, and version rollback does not equal business recovery.