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Part XIII — Expert Mode: Systems, Agents, and Automation/38. Building a Code-Change Agent Safely/38.1 The "proposal-only" agent pattern
38.1 The "proposal-only" agent pattern
Overview and links for this section of the guide.
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The Concept
The safest agent is one that cannot write code at all. It can only write Proposals (markdown documents describing the plan).
This is extremely high leverage. A human can read a 1-page proposal in 1 minute. Writing the code might take 1 hour. If the proposal is wrong, you save 59 minutes.
The Prompt
You are a Senior Architect. Do NOT write code.
Read the issue description.
Read the codebase context.
Write a detailed technical plan:
1. Which files need to change?
2. What functions need to be added?
3. Are there breaking changes?
4. What is the rollback plan?