Paper IV · Cnidarian Foundation
Agentile
The methodology that produced this work
Saul Loveman · Larry Klosowski
Citation
Saul Loveman, Larry Klosowski (2026.05). Agentile: The methodology that produced this work. Gradient Paper IV, Cnidarian Foundation. cnidarian.org/papers/agentile
Abstract
Agentile is the institutional methodology developed during the Citrate Network build: a set of operating rules for human-agent software engineering that produced a Layer-1 blockchain with one engineer plus an AI in four months. The paper extracts the methodology from the codebase that proved it: the four ratchets (test count, formal specs, CI tripwires, frontmatter coverage), the named failure modes catalog, the audit-immutability discipline, the mock-budget gate. The methodology travels — this monorepo is the second project to adopt it, with planned per-project case studies.
Authors
- Saul Loveman
- Larry Klosowski
Why this paper matters to the cooperative
Agentile is how the cooperative builds. Reading the paper is the fastest path to understanding why decisions in this codebase look the way they do — why audits land in dated immutable directories, why every IPC command names its data source, why test count never goes down.